Community
Television Review
VOLUME 7, No. 2 & 3
Summer/Fall 1984
$5.00
Special Double Issue
AROUND
THE WORLD
NILGP CONVENTION
A Time, Inc. Company
Community Television Review 3
Double Issue
Volume 7, No. 2 and 3
The Community Television Review is published
quarterly by the National Federation of Local Cable
Programmers. Send subscriptions, memberships,
and inquiries to NFLCP, 906 Pennsylvania Ave.,
S.E., 2 (XX) 3. Subscriptions come with membership
in the NFLCP: Community Associate/Student
535/year, Professional $50/year, Patron SlOO/year,
Non-profit organizations $90/year, For-profit
organizations $150/year. A subscription can be ob-
tained separately for $12/year for individuals,
$20/year for libraries, or $30/year for organizations.
Contents Copyright © 1984 by the National Federa-
tion of Local Cable Programmers, Inc.— Non-profit
tax exempt organizations may reprint items from the
CTR (with the exception of materials copyrighted
by others), provided they credit CTR and notify the
NFLCP of the reprinting. All others must obtain
advance written permission.
Editorial Board:
Susan Bednarcyzk, Trisha Dair, Jean
Rice, Bill Rushton, George Stoney,
Karen Kalergis
Managing Editor:
Paul D'Ari
Cover Art & Design:
Evans Graphics
Advertising:
Chuck Sherwood (212) 873-4958
or
Paul DAri (202) 544-7272
NFLCP BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Margie Nicholson, Chairperson; Jan Lesher, Vice-
Chair; William J. Tierney, Treasurer; Sally Roethle,
Secretary; George Stoney; Dirk Koning; Rika Welsh;
Trisha Dair, Frank Jamison, Speranza Avram; Fred
Johnson; Lamonte Ward; Karen Kalergis; Martha
Schmidt, Greg Epler Wood; Alan Bushong; Jay
Smith; Joe Van Eaton.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Access Around the World
Public Access: A World View
5
Developing New Directions for Community Communications in Canada
8
Public Access in Great Britain
10
Community Programming in the Netherlands
12
France Enters the Cable Age
14
Community Video in Israel — A View From Kibbutzim
16
Cable Comes to West Germany
20
International Telecommunications and Information Policy
25
Convention News
Optimism Reigns at NFLCP Convention in Denver
26
Cable Access as a Community Asset
30
Making Telecommunications Ready for Democracy
32
NFLCP Awards Night
33
The Convention Exhibitors
35
General
How Local Programming Made the Cut at NCTA's 1984 Convention
36
The Community Videot: A Resource of Technical Tips
38
Public Policy
Whose First Amendment is It, Anyway?
39
Rethinking Public Access
40
4 Community Television Review
Letter from the Managing Editor
This is a special double issue of CTR that follows two themes: NFLCP's 1984 Convention
and community programming around the world. In many ways it is appropriate that these
two topics are being examined together. The NFLCP National Convention moves us to reflect
upon the vast movement in community communications that extends throughout the United
States. In considering this we realize we are not alone in our dedication to community pro-
gramming and public access to mass communications. And when we examine global efforts
to democratize mass communications and sustain local programming, we see that our strug-
gle is a universal one. Battles are being waged to open up mass communications in dozens
of countries in nearly every continent in the world. This inspiring notion is worth reflecting
upon as we go about promoting local programming and public access in our own com-
munities, I hope you enjoy this issue.
The CTR Editorial Board has selected themes for the next five issues. They are the following:
Local Origination
Social Service Agencies & Cable
Cable & the First Amendment/Media
Concentration
Municipal Use of Cable /Interconnection
Schools & Cable
Copy Deadline
November 1
February 1
May I
August 1
November 1
Publication Date
December 15
March 15
June 15
September 15
December 15
If you have any ideas or wish to write for CTR, contact me as soon as possible.
I would also like to take this opportunity to announce that a new section on municipal
use of cable will appear in future issues of CTR. Andy Becher from Beaverton, Oregon will
be coordinating this effort, and if you are interested in submitting any material contact him:
Andy Beecher, Metropolitan Area Communications Commission, 12655 SW Center Street,
Suite 390, Beaverton, Oregon 97005, (503) 641-0218. He wants to hear from people about
successful prograrnming formats, government access rules and procedures, methods of pro-
gram evaluation, advisory committees, management topics and any other matters that con-
cern municipal programmers.
Paul DAri
Letter to the Editor:
Hire A Broadcaster!?
In the Spring 1984 edition of CTR (Vol-
ume 7, No. 1), there appeared a round-
table discussion titled: "Hiring for Access:
Choosing the Right Person for the Job."
Upon reading the article, some thoughts
occurred to me which I would like to share
with the readers of CTR.
The discussants were in my opinion, re-
peating cliches about cable television,
some of which were about as accurate as
the timeworn canards about a certain race
of people having rhythm, and a certain
ethnic group loving money. One thought
of mine, itself unfortunately a cliche, was
that a dead horse was being beaten. Trade
unionists refer to this type of cliche as
"educating the already educated." Here's
the prime cliche example in the article,
again in my opinion:
"Question: What about a broadcaster's
experience as potentially relevant to ac-
cess?" (note the loaded word 'poten-
tially'!)
The round table respondents carefully
explained that cable is narrowcasting; that
broadcasters are unable to operate on lim-
ited resources; that format (form) and
style are stressed above content and pro-
cess by broadcasters; and that broadcast
people are primarily concerned with the
ego trip of personal name recognition
rather than the gratification of seeing the
success of the access producer's product.
Wow! I could provide anecdotes enough
to fill a book to refute those charges (and
I will, someday) but for now, suffice it to
say that any reader of CTR is eminently
aware of the 'focus' of cable, narrow
rather than broad; that most older broad-
cast people that I know who grew up in
small town radio, before the magic tube,
operated on pennies (I remember spot an-
nouncements that sold at 60 cents each),
and they had lots of fun doing things that
even access folks are constrained to avoid
(i.e., deliberately breaking up a live an-
nouncer on the air).
The worse indictment of the lot, how-
ever, that form is valued above content, is
simply not true. What is true is that most
commercial television, and radio too,
does have terrible content quality. But
that is a different story, and has to do
with the thousands of hours of the stuff
that fill the airwaves, and the idea burn-
out that has occurred over the years to the
professionals in the business. What is also
true, is that CTR readers have grown up
watching television, noting the deteriora-
tion of content, but I believe, totally
unaware that they were at the same time
watching a superbly skillfully produced
medium which was giving them a sublimi-
nal "programming" value system second
to none. Your program sense has been
molded by rarely ever watching a technical
error, even on live TV, and that indeed is
'process.' Buy why decry form? It is an-
other way of describing beauty. Botticelli
created form. The U.S. Capitol is wonder-
ful form, and the process which goes on
within the capitol is often of admirable
content.
Finally, as to ego, can it really be, hon-
estly be limited to broadcast television
people? What about the ego that permits
the round table respondents to be quoted
in CTR, and for that matter what about
mine which evoked this response to the ar-
ticle. Again we look to 'focus.' The access
director must use his ego (all communica-
tors are egotists) as a role model for the
access producers in his/her community.
My thesis then is that broadcasters,
even shopworn ones like myself, have a
wealth to offer to access. Simply take the
skills, the expertise and the programming
judgements that you deem valuable, and
discard the values that contradict your
views of access. Do indeed hire the person
who is handicapped by exposure to that
slick broadcast television medium.
Bob Oringel
Bowie Access Corporation
Bowie, MD
Community Television Review 5
Public Access: A World View
By George C. Stoney
The reality of public access to cable tele-
vision is almost unknown outside of
North America. But the concepts that
have shaped this movement and the
underlying needs that have impelled it are
worldwide.
In many countries strategies are being
tested to give people other than profes-
sional journalists and their employers the
right to use electronic highways as they
wish. The best known of these are to be
found in Western Europe and consist of
small blocks of time set aside in the
regular broadcast day for people to speak
their minds.
Since 1970 the BBC's "Open Door"
program has assigned an hour on Sunday
evenings to selected lay bodies and a few
private citizens. The BBC supplies guid-
ance and production funds as well. West
Germany, Belgium, France and Switzer-
land have seen similar experiments in
access-type television. All these efforts
seem so timid, so dominated by the pro-
fessional staffs which supervise them that
anyone familiar with the freewheeling
atmosphere of most access centers in
the U.S. would hardly recognize them as
kin. Yet there is more than a family
resemblance,
I first came upon the access concept
outside of North America at a gathering
of the International Broadcasting Insti-
tute in Mexico City back in 1974. The par-
ticipants in the session devoted to the ac-
cess concept came from most parts of the
globe and from countries where broad-
casting is owned and controlled in many
different ways. Yet in every country the
same needs were being expressed for some
way to give non-professionals a semblance
of the access to broadcast media that they
have to print almost as a matter of course.
In these discussions it was taken as a
given that broadcasting is a virtuai mo-
nopoly, usually government dominated. It
was lamented that with the increasing
dependence world-wide on the electronic
media for public information, only a tiny
body of professionals, working often in
commercially or governmental imposed
straight jackets themselves, were creating
the content.
It struck me forcefully at that time how
much easier it seems to be for central
forces to control communications now
than at any time since the invention of the
printing press. As I listened to the debates
I realized it makes little difference if the
controls rest in government or commercial
hands. Essentially it is always a battle be-
tween the "ins and the outs/'
Piracy in Spain
Since the early 1970s the most notable
practical demonstrations of the public ac-
cess concept outside North America have
been made in defiance of national autho-
rities. Illegal radio and television stations
are now so common in Italy that they pro-
vide a significant amount of information
to the public. Last summer I visited an il-
legal television station in a small Catalon-
speaking town north of Barcelona that
had been shut down repeatedly, only to
open again for its every Monday evening
broadcasts when representatives of the
national authority retired.
I was fascinated to see how activities
around this Spanish station's spare base-
ment studio resembled what I had seen in
a small cable access studio in East Tennes-
see in 1972. The programs, all made by
volunteers from the community, were also
similar:— local sports, performances by
local musical groups, demonstrations by
craftsmen, interviews with senior citizens,
even a comedy team.
I marvled that a government would risk
offending its citizens by censoring such
seemingly innocuous fare. I also marvled
that two hundred local families would
both contribute the equivalent of several
hundred dollars each to buy the used
equipment needed for the operation that
had been smuggled from Italy, and risk
arrest by being identified with the broad-
casts.
The answer given me by the coordinator
w r as as complex as his own motivations for
daring to be involved in the station's most
conspicuous position. He made his living
as the local television repairman, and
resented being restricted to these menial
tasks that supported his family, but which
did not use the superior knowledge he had
about broadcasting. He, as a Catalon,
resented the domination of any national
authority that was only reluctantly recog-
nizing his right to use his own language,
and would not countenance the possibility
that he might also have some claim on a
separate political existence. He saw in the
activities of the station an opportunity to
rally the kind of cooperative spirit that his
town had not known since the days before
Franco put an end to Spain's first republic.
A professor of communications at the
University of Barcelona who had intro-
duced me to this station explained that it
was the potential of the station as a model
of defiance that was most disburbing to
central authorities. His solution was a
characteristicly academic one: he would
try to persuade the government to permit
the station a temporary license to carry
out, under the supervision of his academic
division, a series of experiments in com-
munity programming that could serve as
models for the kind of service the Spanish
Broadcasting Authority would be propos-
ing for its own Catalon language service,
soon to be inaugurated. After all, he said,
it wouldn't make that much difference in
the content of the programs and the tech-
nical quality would be improved.
"What would happen, then, to the local
coordinator and his supporters?" I asked.
"Oh, they will continue to be useful,"
he responded. I nodded and kept my
counsel, deciding not to get involved in a
long discussion about the difference be-
tween true public access and management-
dominated local origination, though the
outlines of the argument seemed distress-
ingly familiary.
Indeed, as I recall from those discus-
sions at the LB. A. in Mexico City in 1974
and, since, in my travels to see how other
countries have dealt with what I have
come to think of as "the impulse toward
public access," the potential threat to
authority is almost always at the root of
the matter.
6 Community Television Review
Community Radio in Nigeria
When Nigeria gained its independence
it was left with a BBC-designed broadcast
system controlled by the central authority.
Four revolutions later this country, made
up of four dominent tribes and many
other autonomous ethnic groups (it is a
nation today primarily because it was so
packaged for Colonial convenience), faced
the fact that a nationally controlled
broadcasting system was not achieving na-
tional unity. A wise Minister of Informa-
tion decided 4 4 to make radio an extension
of the village drum."
For a while community radio in Nigeria
blossomed with local singers, local drama*
local religious and political happenings.
Educators and health workers broke away
from the BBC-style formal presentations
to include non-certified purveyors of folk
wisdom. Soon ordinary people who had
gained skill in the use of radio were be-
coming politically important. And soon
there were rumblings in government cir-
cles that community radio was fostering
insurrection, as indeed it might have been
in some instances. Inevitably the crack-
down came, but not soon enough to kill
completely an impulse toward self-expres-
sion and cultural autonomy that still
characterizes the best of community radio
in Nigeria.
There are parallels with the Nigerian
radio story taking place today in com-
munity radio efforts being sponsored by
the Maryknoll Fathers in Guatemala and
Peru, by Baha'is in Columbia and by non-
governmental agencies in many other
parts of the world. Interestingly enough,
finding local people who are quite inno-
cent of professional training but who are
able and willing to make programs that
reach out to their neighbors seems never
to be a problem. Amost always the prob-
lems are with those in authority and their
professional hirelings who are convinced
that the people can't be trusted.
An Experiment in India
I visited India at a time when the
educators there had been given access to a
satellite to experiment with the beaming
of programs to a significant segment of its
40,000 villages. Despite more than two
years of preparation, scarcely enough pro-
gramming had been stockpiled by the day
broadcasting was to begin to last out the
first month. In panic the professionals
turned to village educators who, in turn,
asked the help of local parents and farm-
ers. The result was some fascinating pro-
grams recorded on half inch black and
white porta-packs and put out on the
satellite without editing.
How well these tapes were received in
the villages I have no way of knowing. But
I can report that when I was shown a sam-
ple by one of the teachers involved and
asked permission to copy it to take back
to the States, he was forbidden to let me do
so by his superior who seemed embarrass-
ed by its lack of technical quality and con-
formity to "educational standards,"
The Struggle for Access
So it goes all over the world . . . the
"ins" use technical and professional stan-
dards as measures to keep the public at
large from having access to the power
bases and/ or financial bases they feel are
rightfully theirs alone. Meanwhile, all
over the world, ordinary people are prov-
ing that they can speak for themselves.
Where there has been relatively free and
continuous access, unhampered by finan-
cial restrictions, popular success has been
notable, as the Canadian Broadcasting
Commission's remarkable work with the
native peoples of the Northern Territories
can attest. Where any sizable segment of
the people have experienced access, even
the harshest opposition that follows can-
not kill it completely. In proof, consider
the growing phenomenon of illegal radio
stations that are adjunct to most revolu-
tionary movements. By now there are sim-
ply too many people who know how to
deal with the technical machinery of
broadcasting to keep it forever a state
secret.
An interesting case in point is the
politicizing of audio cassettes in West
Africa. Popular singers are also political
messengers. Used cassettes sell for eight
cents a piece in the market towns. With a
mini-to-mini cable almost anyone with a
cassette player can make his own copies to
take back to their village, and they do.
This is pamphleteering that moves that
vast body of illiterate people who, never-
theless, are beginning to be politically ac-
tive and are beyond the reach of print.
These movements toward more popular
participation, be they illegal radio and tv
stations, home-made cassettes or authori-
ty-sponsored programs like those repre-
sented by the CBC's work with Indians,
will not, in themselves, automatically lead
to the development of a tradition of free-
dom of the airways similar to the doctrine
of press freedom we assume to be part of
the North American and Western Euro-
pean tradition. This tradition of press
freedom has been so influential in other
parts of the globe that only in the most
completely totalitarian countries does
there exist in the rhelm of print anything
like the controlls assumed to be necessary
with electronic media.
On close scrutiny it is devastating to
note how little true freedom of the air-
ways exists anywhere. This is why our cur-
rent experimental period with public ac-
cess to cable has been, and remains, so im-
portant. We are pioneering a concept that
is as important to the existence of popular
government in our day as was the concept
of "one man one vote" a century ago.
Short of going the "illegal" route (which
has its own undemocratic tendencies) we
are obligated to find for this new concept
of access equally new governing principals.
Censorship
One of the fundamental obstacles to de-
veloping these principles is the argument
for "professionalism and objectivity' * in
access. This is becoming a more and more
familiar argument; one I am hearing often
from city cable officers in the United
States, especially those responsible for
municipal access. Even librarians, who
would not countenance the thought of
censoring books or the programs offered
in public forums they house, often take
Community Television Review 7
the same attitude when considering
whether or not to have citizen-generated
programs appear on "their" channels.
It's the "ins against the outs" once again,
even in our ideal world of public access
cable.
In the abstract almost everyone will
agree that censorship is bad. When one
gets down to cases, however, almost all of
us are likely to find exceptions. Eventual-
ly, as the concept of public access
matures, we may have to take heed of this
inherent contradiction.
In the U.S. it is generally assumed that
information not generated by private par-
ties is suspect, and government agencies
are often hard pressed to carry out their
responsibilities to educate the public with-
out heavy criticism. Yet anyone who has
worked in a government program that re-
quired public understanding is aware of
the difficulty this imposes on all concern-
ed. Perhaps with cable-access we can turn
the government-assigned channels into a
device for experimenting with another ap-
proach. Why not make these channels a
place where the government and the peo-
ple exchange information? Must elec-
tronic media always present confrontation
and conflict?
Recently I was talking with a young
press and tv representative covering the
Central American scene as a stringer for
U.S. networks and leading journals. He
talked of "scoops" and of "exclusives,"
of "angles" that would catch the atten-
tion of editors in the States. He also talk-
ed of social developments and historical
observations that I had not seen in his or
any other dispatches coming our of Cen-
tral America. After a while, he suggested,
even the more conscientious reporter
sends back what he thinks will get printed
or broadcast rather than what he thinks is
most important. And if the country in
question has a different agenda is there
any wonder that it would be dissatisfied
with the kind of reporting that results
from our brand of "freedom of the
press"?
The same situation, it seems to me, oc-
curs on the most local level in our own
country. Cable is giving us an opportunity
to experiment with alternatives, always
remembering that with our pure access
channels there must be room for whatever
alternative opinions people wish to ex-
press.
All over the world people are hungry
for the kind of access to electronic media
that cable has given many of us in the
U.S. almost as a matter of course. There
is no doubt that we must fight to maintain
that access. We also must remember to
use it responsibly, for we may well be set-
ting patterns that will influence media use
all over the world.
George Stoney is a noted filmmaker and
professor of film and video at New York
University.
NFLCP Calendar
m
October 11-13 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Central States will be
held in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Contact:
Cathy Moats-Ols, 7 Severance Circle,
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118, (216)
291-4006.
October 11-13 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Midatlantic will be held
in Reading, Pennsylvania. Contact: Kate
Stutzman, BCTV, 645 Perm Street,
Reading, PA 19061, (215) 374-3065.
m
October 12-14 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference tor the Midwest will be held
in Minneapolis. Contact: Bootsie Ander-
son, Group W Cable, 934 Woodhill Drive,
Roseville, MN 55113, (612) 483-9471.
m
October 19-20 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Southwest will be held
in Dallas. Contact: Barbara Dickson,
AARP, 6440 N. Central, #304, Dallas, TX
75206, (214) 369-9206
November 2-3 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Southeast will be held
in Tampa. Contact: Dave Olive, Tampa
Cable, 4400 W. Buffalo Ave., Tampa, FL
33614, (813) 877-6805.
November 2-3 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Northeast will be held
in Portland, Maine. Contact: Barbara
Eberhardt, University of South Maine, 96
Falmouth Street, Portland, ME 04101, (207)
780-4470.
m
November 9-11 The Far West Region of
the NFLCP will be holding a retreat at the
Asilomar Conference Center. For more in-
formation contact: Alicia Maldonado, 1945
W. Helm Ave., Fresno, CA 93626, (209)
252-8217.
December 8 The NFLCP Fall Regional
Conference for the Far West will be held
in Santa Ana, California. For more infor-
mation contact: Ken Fisher, 1010 Mac-
Arthur Blvd. #7(5, Santa Ana, CA 92707,
(714) 525-1191.
8 Community Television Review
Developing New Directions For Community
Communications in Canada
By Frank Spiller
Cable community programming in
Canada in 1984 is far different from what
most idealists hoped for in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. Concepts like access, par-
ticipation, and community control, are
much less evident, and most community
channels provide a scaled down version of
conventional television, In all but a very
few cases the initiative for the program-
ming rest squarely with the cable licensee,
and such community participation and in-
volvement that does take place is primar-
ily achieved through the contribution of
citizen volunteers to cable company pro-
duced programming. Community channels
have in effect become the local television
service in many communities.
Predictable Results
In retrospect, the way the cable com-
munity programming concept has evolved
in Canada could have perhaps been pre-
dicted. While the Canadian Radio, Tele-
vision and Telecommunications Commis-
sion's (CRTC) consistently strong encour-
agement of the concept resulted in a
relatively stable source of technical re-
sources and operating funds from cable
licensees, this advantage has to be weighed
against the tendency which developed to
constrain extensive community involve-
ment because licensees, being ultimately
responsible for the service, naturally tend-
ed to adopt a cautious approach. With no
existing models on which to base the com-
munity channel concept, it was not sur-
prising that conventional television prac-
tices exerted a strong influence on the
early planning and selection of cable com-
pany resources and personnel.
What of the future? Are there ways to
continue to encourage more experimenta-
tion and innovation?
Leaving aside the critical influence of
regulatory policy, it is clear that past and
present practices represent a valuable
learning experience.
For example, the early notions of what
community television might accomplish
were far too idealistic. There just aren't a
lot of people willing and anxious to use
community television as a new means of
communication and expression. Further-
more, even with all the technical im-
provements, television is a complex
medium which simply does not lend itself
to a simple communications process. It's
as though we have expected the average
person to suddenly become adept at
public speaking without having learned
how to read and write. We have also
blithely assumed that the public's faltering
efforts with this new medium can be given
broad public exposure and in this way
miraculously achieve some kind of ad-
vanced forms of interpersonal and inter-
community communication. Worst of all,
we have looked to the general public to
somehow comprehend all this and to ac-
cept quite different visual styles on the
same delivery system that provides mass
entertainment. The miracle is that grass-
roots television has found some accept-
ance, although its inevitable drift towards
conventional television formats is gen-
erally observable.
If the users of the newer media for com-
munity communication and expression
are to achieve any real success in the
future, it is essential to build the concepts
in new ways. As far as the Canadian expe-
rience is concerned, two primary needs
tend to stand out above all others. There
is a need to achieve more community par-
ticipation and control, and to develop the
use of interactive systems.
But even the acceptance of these two
objectives will not suffice unless we are
prepared to return to the basic require-
ments for effective communication. This
means recognizing the existence of a
sender and a receiver; the necessity of the
receiver to frame the communication in a
way best suited to his/her knowledge and
experience; and the needs of the receiver
to both receive and accept the communi-
cation, to exercise choice, and to interact
with the sender.
Utilizing Alternative
Delivery Systems
The expanding electronic distribution
system is beginning to provide us with
many more communications options with
the result that we do not have to place all
our hopes in television, and, in particular,
in conventional television formats. Fur-
thermore, we can combine various tech-
niques such as audio and cable, computers
and video, telephony and broadcasting. In
other words, we can offer citizens and
communities a number of differing forms
of participation and, most importantly,
we can begin to achieve selective routing
of the communication — we don't have to
remain forever with the concept of broad-
casting, the one source to a mass of recip-
ients.
All this means we can introduce pros-
pective participants to media opportun-
ities at a level suited to their needs, expe-
riences, and aptitudes. They may, for
example, use voice only systems and par-
ticipate in computer polling or in phone-in
discussions.
In the future, it would seem necessary to
make a renewed effort to select personnel
in charge of media facilities who can both
provide conventional type services as well
as be "facilitators" for community par-
ticipation. Clearly, these two needs should
not be separate but should be embodied in
varying combinations in all services.
Developing More
Accessible Tools
As more and more services are delivered
nationally or internationally via satellites,
it will become increasingly important to
revise our present concepts of local ser-
vices. In Canada we have demonstrated
how the community access concept evolv-
ed into a new low-cost local television ser-
vice somewhat more akin to conventional
off-air television than was originally en-
visaged. This does not mean that commu-
nity participation on a broad scale is
unworkable; it only means that the right
conditions and techniques for its effective
development must be given far greater
consideration.
For example, a small cable system in
Ontario invites subscribers to compose
simple messages, statements, or com-
ments. These are displayed on the com-
munity channel in an alpha numeric for-
Community Television Review 9
NFLCP
AUDIENCE
RESEARCH
mat. This simple device uses the written
word— which most everyone can cope
with— and invites various forms of re-
sponse. The result has been a great deal of
effective debate on major concerns in the
community. Furthermore, it has probably
been more effective, and certainly less
costly and time consuming than a conven-
tional television format. This does not re-
place conventional television formats, it
simply illustrates that community partici-
pation can involve many forms of com-
munication with conventional television
formats being only one of many options
available.
In Canada our cable community pro-
gramming experience has paved the way
for new forms of conventional local televi-
sion service involving a partnership be-
tween the community volunteer and the
cable company programmers. The early
idealism about community television is
over and we are now faced with a re-
examination of the way in which an ex-
panding electronic distribution system
and an increasing range of new technolog-
ical options can bring about a more effec-
tive public relationship with all media.
This means that we must continue to ex-
plore new techniques of communication
not limiting our efforts to community
television but looking for ways to allow
for new forms of public participation and
control within every available media
opportunity.
In this way the potential for success is
not only increased but the public access
concept becomes more available to more
people whatever their station or experi-
ence.
The tools at our disposal, whether to
create and receive content or to interact
with it, are as broad as our imagination
allows, from the telephone, broadcasting
and cable, to computers and cassettes.
I am convinced that broad access objec-
tives can be realized if we return to the
basic principles of, and requirements for,
effective communication, and build more
choice, interactivity, and public participa-
tion naturally and unobtrusively into our
future content production and service
development strategies for all media.
Frank Spiller is President of Francis
Spiller Associates in Nepean, Ontario,
The first nation-wide compilation of com-
munity programming viewership is current-
ly being conducted by Western Michigan
University for the National Federation of
Local Cable Programmers. The research
team is seeking all existing data and is ask-
ing that copies of all questionnaires and
other research instruments used in local au-
dience surveys, along with written inter-
pretation of results, either in narrative or
quantitative form, be sent to them for in-
clusion in the compilation.
If your access center, local origination
service, or other community programming
facility is considering conducting audience
research in the near future, the WMU team
will be available to help with instrument
design and will attempt to answer questions
regarding other areas of audience research
such as sampling techniques, project report-
ing and public relations value of resulting
It is recommended that those consider-
ing an audience study review a new addi-
tion to the NFLCP Educational Packet
Series titled, Audience Survey, available for
$1100 from NFLCP, 906 Pennsylvania Ave.,
SE, Washington, DC 20003.
To be most useful for the current NFLCP
study, the research team is asking that cer-
tain critical questions be included in any
planned local surveys. These questions
should focus on the availability of communi-
ty programming services as related to con-
sumer decisions to initially subscribe to
cable service and whether such communi-
ty programming plays a part in decisions
to renew subscription. Cross-referencing of
responses is encouraged by asking similar
questions in the negative, such as, "How
would you feel if community programming
were not a part of your cable TV service?"
Please forward results of existing studies,
whether or not they include this material!
To be included in this national study,
survey results must be in the hands of the
research team by mid-to late-October of
1984.
Contact: Prof. Frank R. Jamison
Head of Media Services
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-3899
A volunteer operates camera for a community channel in Ontario.
10 Community Television Review
Public Access in Great Britain
By Lauren-Glenn Davitian
The heart of British public access television
lies in that country's tradition of public ser-
vice broadcasting and documentary truth.
Since the advent of radio, television, and film,
British producers have established these media
as cornerstones of national culture and
democratic virtue. In 1922, John Reith
dedicated the British Broadcasting Corpora-
tion to the "maintenance of high standards, the
provision of the best and the rejection of the
hurtful." John Grierson, British documentary
pioneer, saw non-fiction films as the oppor-
tunity to "open up the screen to the real
world."
Fifty years of British media may be viewed
as the struggle between public service ideals,
the imperatives of popular programming and
the concentration of distribution and produc-
tion resources into the hands of bureaucrats
in the national information networks (known
as the BBC-ITV duopoly).
The Alternative Commercial
Network
The most recent effort to restore balance to
British media services is the development of
the second commercial channel (ITV2), or
Channel 4.
The mission of Channel 4's "commission-
ing editors" (most programs are produced out-
of-house) is to cater to interest groups
neglected by other national media and to pro-
vide a venue for independent film and video-
makers. In spite of their intention to institute
a greater sense of public accountability, Chan-
nel 4 encounters the same problems faced by
every broadcast enterprise. They must main-
tain at least 14 percent of the national audience
share, and turn to "popular," "light" program-
ming to do so. As a result, they are alreading
using independent producers less frequently,
and many groups and producers are disap-
pointed that the Channel is not the access
panacea that was promised.
Yet, the observer cannot be too critical.
Channel 4 has made headway into the staun-
chly unionized broadcasting industry. They
negotiated the "Workshop Declaration", allow-
ing independent producers and regional film
and video workshops to provide their pro-
grams to network audiences. Seventeen of
more than fifty workshops are eligible for this
program, entitling at least four members to an-
nual salaries of 8000 pounds (nearly $12,000).
Recognizing these Workshops to be a source
of innovative material, Channel 4 has more
than doubled the funding previously available
to local media projects. The Channel has
dedicated more than $1,000,000 in equipment
and programming budgets to twenty media
projects.
The British Film Institute (BFI) en-
thusiastically endorses the Declaration, noting
that "these production bases give stabiity and
continuity to their work by concerning
themselves with their audiences: by
distributing their product, by developing new
audiences for it with education, and by con-
fronting filmmakers with their responsibility
to their audience/'
With this attention from Channel 4, BFI,
and unions, the door has opened wide tor the
possibility of domestic (and even international)
distribution of socially relevant programs pro-
duced by local media workshops.
Decentralizing The Means Of
Production
The first attempts to truly decentralize media
production in Britian could not occur until
video equipment became profitable enough
to move out of the hands of the professionals
and into the neighborhoods.
Inspired by the technical possibilities of low-
guage video and innovative projects, such as
the NFBC's "Challenge for Change/La Societe
Nouvelle", North-American and British media
makers moved into the streets, schools and
social clubs with their equipment.
In the late 1960s, media workshops appeared
in working class communities throughout the
country. Educated producers, interested in em-
powering the young, elderly, unemployed -
taught video, photography, radio and
newspaper production.
While the first American experiments with
low guage video production depended upon
the resources of local cable operators, British
producers relied upon grants from local arts
councils and sympathetic foundations for both
equipment and program funding. Crude as
many of these projects seem, they provided
real alternatives to national programming (that
did not always address local needs and issues) .
Viewed in the local context, home-made,
hand-made media reinforced each communi-
ty's picture of themselves.
Relying upon close circuit distribution in
churches, union halls and truck hoods, videos
could be seen anywhere there was an audience
and an outlet for the monitor. These projects
were the crux of access.
The film and video workshops evolved into
two types of production facilities: those that
continue to be interested in the "process' 1 of
hands-on community instruction and em-
powerment, and those concerned with a social-
ly relevant "product" that reaches large and
distant audiences.
It is not surprising that many of these groups
struggle with one foot in the community center
and the other in the sophisticated sound stage.
Many of the media workers want to affect a
larger audience without abandoning their
original ideals and devoted local supporters.
Phil Stuart of the Edinburgh Film Trust notes
that "video and filmmakers who have been
working in the community for a long time
finally have the chance to show their work on
a national medium. In many cases, their con-
cern for community work goes out the win-
dow. This is understandable, since they want
to speak to more people and make a living do-
ing what they want to do. Although we (the
Film Trust) are partly supported by Channel
4 (they received several thousand pounds for
a new editing suite and a commission for a
piece on the disabled) we are struggling to find
a way to incorporate the work we do within
the community into the programs we produce
for Channel 4."
In light of the appeal of Channel 4's national
audience and the diminishing lustre of the
close circuit community, what is the alternative
for the local producer? Where can communi-
ty workers showcase their work, teach their
neighbors and support their habit?
Cable Television
Since cable services were not necessary to
provide off-air channels, operators in Great
Britain pinned their hopes for an audience on
Pay-TV and local programming. In 1972 the
Labour government, wary of the implications
of commercial services, rejected any plans for
Pay-TV services. However, later that year, the
newly elected Conservative government, eager
Community Television Review 11
to develop any kind of industry, awarded
preliminary licenses to five cable operators,
with the provision that their programming "be
specifically designed to appeal to local tastes
and interests".
In the hope that they could soon prosper
from commercial offerings, cable operators
enthusiastically endowed local pilot projects
with budgets of up to 80,000 pounds.
In the first two years, Swindon Viewpoint,
Sheffield Cablevision, Cable Vision of Well-
ingborough and Bristol Channel, are produc-
ing between 2 and 12 hours of original pro-
g ramming each week. Programs dealt with the
elderly, young mothers, unemployed, current
events, sports, theatre and community bulletin
boards. One observer noted "the relentlessly
local nature of the material is unmistakable".
The only publicly funded cable access ex-
periment began at Milton Keynes Housing
estate in 1976. As a community information
service, Channel 40 became an essential part
of planning a self-contained and sufficient
"new town". The Channel's founder, Michael
Barrett (formerly of Swindon Viewpoint)
comments:
"The fact is that a lot of the things that most
of us know most about are very banal, or-
dinary, everyday things. That's why I'm con-
vinced that this sort of community televi-
sion is not about the newsworthly or the
special or the unusual, it is about the or-
dinary and the everyday."
The ordinary and the everyday does not
cultivate a large subscriber base and cable
operators were disappointed with the access
experiments. When the 1984 Labour govern-
ment declined to set a date for the installation
of a national cable service, the operators stop-
ped funding the local centers.
Swindon Viewpoint and Sheffield Cable-
Vision tried to generate programming without
a dependable source of revenue, only to
languish and die. The sole survivor, Green-
which CableVision continues to produce local
programs on a limited basis, and serves as part
of the first Pay-TV project initiated by That-
cher's government.
The State of Access
The Labour Party opposes the commercial
development of cable television as a threat to
British broadcasting's public service tradition.
The Conservative Party greets all information
technologies as the solution for domestic
unemployment and a means toward interna-
tional prestige.
The opposing Parties agree on one point:
the potential of cable to serve as a unique
forum for local issues.
Annan's Committee on the Future of Broad-
casting notably skirts the issue of cable (in the
hope that it will disappear) except to argue
against pay-TV and to comment that communi-
ty television:
"extends the number of program makers and
takes the program makers out of the charm-
ed circle of professionals; and this in turn
creates a more alert and selective television
audience. Cable television is one of the best
ways in which a local community is able to
communicate with itself."
Lord Hunt's 1982 "Inquiry into Cable Ex-
pansion and Broadcasting Policy" (commis-
sioned by the Thatcher administration) states:
"we believe that there should be a presump-
tion that the cable operator should accept
responsibility for ensuring and financially
assisting some community participation in
cable programmes and we hope that cable
systems' relationship with and contribution
to their local communities might become a
source of mutual pride."
Neither report specifies how community ac-
cess services can operate. Annan fails to lay
any ground work for commercially viable
cable services that would support access, while
Hunt presumes that the cable operator's in-
herant sense of citizenship will result in work-
ing access projects.
Yet, the recent round of franchise negotia-
tions disclosed few such intentions on the part
of the cable operators. Nor does it seem that
the government, in its eagerness to promote
economic development, will assert any
authority through the Cable Television Bill
now before Parliament.
Community workers, practiced from years
of media workshops, pilot access projects and
relevant causes, are feverishly busy alerting
legislators and the public of the importance
of a public access mandate.
A recent conference in Leicester, England
brought community workers and activists
together to discuss an agenda to insure a public
access policy bestowing local autonomy upon
the communities that will be cabled in the
coming years. They proposed to combat the
centralized control of cable services through
the establishment of local task forces of
film/videoworksrs, educators, librarians and
city councillors. They plan to exert union
pressure through the ACTT, who opposes the
current cable bill, and to encourage the Labour
Party to formulate a progressive cable policy.
The Labour controlled Greater London Coun-
cil and Sheffield City Council issued a joint
paper stating that public and educational ac-
cess channels should be provided and funded.
There is ample evidence that such channels
would be used by the community and serve
to balance the commercial interest of cable
operators— restoring some aspect of Britain's
public service tradition to the rapidly develop-
ing information technologies.
Lauren-Glenn Davitian is with Chittenden
Community Television in Burlington, Vermont,
v
Culture Shock will present a
weekly, hour Ions television almanac showcasing
"alternative video/" Culture Shock is a forum for an
outrageously eclectic mix of upbeat att zat film
and video shorts from ten seconds to ten minutes.
CULTURE SHOCK WANTS YOUR INNOVATIVE VTDCOS
Send us your work directly or write for further details;
CULTURE SHOCK
Box 1462, Middleburg, VA 221 1 7
12 Community Television Review
Community Programming in the Netherlands
By Nick Jankowski
The Netherlands means to many people
no more than the stereotypical images of
tulips, wooden shoes and a little boy hold-
ing back the sea with his finger stuck in
the dike. There is much more to this little
country, however, and community com-
munications is one of its most interesting
stories.
Looking Backwards:
Community Television
in the 1970s:
In October 1971, a group of residents in
Melick-Herkenbosch , a small town in the
southern part of the country, realized that
it was relatively easy to 4 'plug into" the
cable network and to distribute their own
television programs. This group, led by
the town mayor, transmitted a city council
debate to the 36 households on the cable
system in the community. A week later
another group, located in Amsterdam,
cablecast the illegal occupation of a
neighborhood center.
At that time locally produced cable tele-
vision programs were not covered by
Dutch communications law. A ware of this
gap in the regulations, these and other
groups around the country began making
plans to transmit video programs over the
cable systems. However, the Dutch gov-
ernment subsequently enacted a decree
prohibiting transmission of local pro-
gramming without prior governmental au-
thorization. At the same time, however,
the government conceded there might be
potential value in such local electronic
communication. The government agreed
to support a national experiment with the
new medium.
After three years of negotiation, six
communities were selected to participate
in this experiment. A culturally represen-
tative organization from each community
was funded by the government to pur-
chase equipment, set up a studio, hire per-
sonnel, and produce radio and television
programs.
The official experiment began in 1975
and continued until early 1978. Three in-
dependent research teams were also fund-
ed to study the development and use of
the medium, and they made the following
observations:
• nonprofessionals could produce tele-
vision and radio programs of interest to
their communities;
• viewership of the programs ranged
between 20 and 30 percent, figures com-
parable to those achieved by some na-
tional programs;
§ the programs were viewed by a cross
section of the population within the six
communities; and
• younger residents tended to become
more involved in program production ac-
tivities than older residents.
The results are mixed regarding the ex-
tent to which this programming contrib-
uted to the process of community devel-
opment—one of the fundamental goals of
community programming. The informa-
tional part of this process was generally
achieved, but there is insufficient evidence
as to whether the stations contributed to
the mobilization of residents in communi-
ty affairs— the second and more impor-
tant aspect of the community develop-
ment process.
This experiment terminated in 1978.
Five of the original six community sta-
tions were able to find local sources of
funding to continue their operations; the
sixth folded for lack of funds.
Community Television
in the 1980s:
After the national experiment there was
a great deal of interest from municipalities
and community groups to extend and re-
fine use of the medium. The government,
however, refused to grant permits for ex-
tensive experimentation. Finally, due in
part to pressure applied through the
emergence of radio and television pirates,
the government issued a White Paper in
1983 which included guidelines for com-
munity communications. The White Paper
included the following requirements on
community programming channels:
• the station organization had to be
"culturally representative" of the com-
munity in which it operated;
• the local government was to decide
which station organization would receive
a franchise to produce programs;
# advertising was prohibited;
# transmissions were to be made only
through cable networks; and
# funding was to come from local or
regional sources.
The points in this White Paper have
been strongly debated, and since release
of the document several changes have
been made. No longer, for example, does
the local government have the last say in
whether a station comes to the communi-
ty. The city council has but an advisory
voice; now the Ministry of Culture and
later a special commission will make the
ultimate decision. There is also some
room for developing local programming
on low-power television. This month
(September, 1984) a conference is being
held to allocate frequencies to European
countries. It has been calculated that the
Netherlands may be able to construct 500
low-power stations.
About a year before the White Paper,
in December 1981, local groups concerned
with local origination programming form-
ed an organization designed to lobby for
community television and provide support
services to new initiatives. This organiza-
tion, Local Broadcasters in the Nether-
lands (OLON), serves much the same pur-
pose as the NFLCP does in the United
States.
In 1984 the OLON received a grant
from the national government to expand
its assistance to new community stations
around the country. Two field workers
are advising groups on organization struc-
ture, fund raising and programming
policy; another three staff members are
upgrading the documentation facilities of
the national office and developing train-
ing programs and publications. This grant
is due to expire at the end of the year, but
the staff is hopeful that it will be renewed.
Funding has been the most pressing
problem for all community stations in the
country. Advertising, as already mention-
ed, is not presently allowed on community
cable operations. This means that one of
the potentially lucrative funding sources
for local programming has been denied. It
Community Television Review 13
is also not the practice in the Netherlands
(unlike the United States) for cable com-
panies to fund community programming.
Therefore, the only funding sources re-
maining are: local government subsidies,
donations, membership dues and com*
mercial use of video equipment.
None of these revenue sources have
much to offer. Most local governments
are either unwilling or unable to contrib-
ute much to local programming budgets.
In addition, donations are rare, and dues
are negligible. Commercial activity may
prove to be profitable, but there is also the
danger that it detracts the station from its
original purpose — developing program-
ming for the community. Many stations
hope the restriction on advertising will
change and that this will solve their finan-
cial problems* However, there is a con-
cern that community programming might
come under commercial control. There-
fore, OLON recommends that this fund-
ing source never exceed 30 percent of the
annual budget.
In 1984, 120 local programming opera-
tions had either developed formal organi-
zational structures or were in the process
of doing so. Another 100 groups have
been developing such structures and
bonds with their communities. In addi-
tion, 25 stations have received franchises
from their local governments and have
been programming on a weekly basis.
Limited funding prompted most of these
groups to develop radio in the initial
stages of activity rather than television.
The Coming Years
Community radio and television has
secured a slot in the national media policy
debate. There is seldom a proclamation
from the government which does not at
least mention community communica-
tions. However, community programming
is no longer in the limelight. The emphasis
is now on new information and communi-
cation services. These services are an old
story to people in the U.S. who have fol-
lowed cable developments for the past
decade — or who live in areas served by ad-
vanced cable technology. Two experiments
with interactive telecommunications are
now on the testing bench in the Nether-
lands. In both of them, forms of commu-
nity television are being developed, but it
is peripheral to the core of these projects.
The government and communications in-
dustries are concerned with interactive
services, not with locally produced pro-
grams or public access. In a sense, com-
munity television has become a token in
the total package of services— a kind of
entry card for the commercial services.
In addition to the experiments with in-
teractive cable television, there is also a
great deal of interest in locally produced
television for foreign laborers living in the
country. This minority programming has
received substantial financial assistance
from the national government. Officials
are hoping that programming directed at
Moroccan and Turkish laborers will help
reduce some of the socialization problems
these nationalities face. But people who
have examined the plans and pretentions
of these experiments suspect there is little
chance that these programs will seriously
contribute to what has become a major
social problem— the large percentage of
migrant workers living in the country.
Community programming has now be-
come a minor institution in the Nether-
lands. It is nationally recognized, and has
deep roots in a number of communities.
However, the idealism surrounding this
movement in the early 1970s has faded; in
its place has come concern with the day-
to-day routine of developing and main-
taining a station, Toos Bastiaansen, an
OLON staff member, sees this as a tempo-
rary concern, "Later, once the stations
get off the gound, once they solve some of
their immediate problems—then I think
they will have time to consider some of the
more philosophical questions of com-
munity television.'*
Nick Jankowski is a former Calif omian
teaching and doing research at the Insti-
tute of Mass Communications on the
Catholic University Campus in Nijegan,
Holland,
14 Community Television Review
France Enters the Cable Age
By Adam Steg
We all know what a haphazard process the
development of electronic media has been in
the U.S. Various structures of hardware, pro-
gramming, and legislation have come and gone
as victims of the whims of private commerce
and changing fashions in public policy. This
has not been so in France where a tight reign
has been held on the control and expansion
of radio and television in the postwar period.
Although many have justifiably lamented the
isolationism, the older technology and rigid
politics of French media — the delayed
development of new systems has had a signifi-
cant benefit. As much as U.S. cities late in the
franchising game have benefitted from new
hardware developments and have learned from
the mistakes made in earlier franchises,
French cable policy draws a great deal on the
experience of her European neighbors and the
U.S.
Development of French Cable
Policy
The first major step for cable communica-
tions in France came with the Audiovisual
Communication Law which abolished the state
broadcasting monopoly in 1982. Cable net-
works for TV and other services can now be
built at the initiative of local government
authorities, which for the first time can take
partners from private enterprise and have full
local control over services, subject to
reasonable constraints such as prior authoriza-
tion for TV services, "must carry" channels,
and a guarantee to implement interactive
services.
The French government has not, however,
taken the franchise approach of the United
States and Great Britain. All cable networks
will be installed, owned and operated by
France Telecom, an arm of the French PTT
(Post & Telecommunications Service). France
Telecom will then, in turn, make the facilities
available for a fee to each local cable TV com-
pany. The local cable company will typically
be a joint venture between a local authority,
the national broadcasting authority (Tele-
Diffusion de France, or TDF) and private sec-
tor partners. An ambitious 10-year plan calls
for local networks in the next 3 years reaching
1.4 million households, with an eventual goal
of 6 million homes by 1992. During this cabl-
ing period, a new broadcast pay-TV service
called Canal Plus is intended to partially
satisfy the strong video demand until the
availability of the new cable networks. The
channel will build its appeal on feature films,
using a scrambled picture and inexpensive
decoders in subscribers' homes. Although
there will be no advertising as such , program
sponsorships will be sold. Unlike the "radio
lib res," or private radio stations which have
proliferated since the state monopoly abolition,
the H.A. does not foresee the granting of
licenses to private broadcast stations for at
least 15 years, for according to Bernard
Schreiner, France's main objective in televi-
sion is to create the national interactive cable
system.
In giving the green light for cable networks,
the government insisted that maximum use be
made of advanced technologies and methods.
These include: switched-star topology for net-
works, optical fibers, addressability, and
interactivity.
Biarritz: A Model for the
Future?
The trial optical cable network at Biarritz,
in southwestern France, is the world's largest
in terms of connected subscribers and the
range of services available. Opened early in
1984, the network connects a total of 1,500
subscribers and 300 businesses or other pro-
fessional users.
The optical fiber network at Biarritz has
been designed for interactive distribution of
TV and stereo sound programs, for switched
videophone/telephone services, and for
videotex and supervideotex. The system will
allow one household to watch two different TV
programs, listen to stereo FM, and use the
videophone— all simultaneously from a single
pair of optical fibers. France Telecom supplies
subscribers with a terminal which combines
a videophone/telephone with a videotex
keyboard and service controls. The subscriber
then provides his own television, stereo set,
and VCR, if desired.
The Biarritz system is engineered to provide
15 video program channels and 12 FM stereo
sound channels. Designed for the subscribers*
TV sets, the video program channels include
relays of the 3 French networks, French-
language channels from Belgium and
Switzerland, channels from nearby Spain, and
two satellite-delivered pay channels (the
British Sky Channel and TV5, a multinational
French language service). Users will also have
access to an innovative program access ser-
vice planned for all French cable systems
known as the program bank. The program
bank is designed to let the viewer select the
programming himself on the special channel,
using his videotex terminal to peruse the
catalog of available shows. During times of
heavy demand, the program bank will offer
an "a la carte" menu of a limited number of
programs at any one time. These selections
will be determined by subscriber voting, where
each household will have a certain number of
"voting points*' for each month, allowing the
subscriber to indicate his preferences on an
interactive converter. In theory, this will allow
the content of the program bank menu to
reflect the collective preferences of the com-
munity. At off-peak times, any program in the
bank can be accessed by each subscriber.
The switched services at Biarritz provide the
establishment of bidirectional audio and
audic^picture connections. These include
videophone and telephone services, and
videotex and supervideotex. Videophones
C'picturephones") have picture quality to
enable the correspondent to read a document
placed in front of the videophone camera.
Videotex accesses the large Antiope videotex
services, phone directories, and other infor-
mation services implemented throughout
France for years.
Supervideotex combines videodiscs with text
to provide live-action pictures for such services
as teleshopping catalogs.
Coming Back to Earth:
Economic Realities
The impressive experimental system at Biar-
ritz is just that — experimental. Designed to
test the hardware and systems of a state-of-the-
art French fiber optics network, we arc un-
sure whether all of Biarritz's features will
become standardized nationwide. Indeed,
some have criticized the H.A. decision to push
for a standardized fiber-optic system. Mayor
Jean-Marie Rausch of the northeastern city of
Metz recently signed an accord for a feasibility
study of extending the present coaxial system
in Metz, where 7,500 subscribers out of 35,000
homes passed have received cable service for
Community Television Review 15
a number of years, Referring to the fiber op-
tic commitment, Rausch said, "France is too
poor to permit the creation of another Con-
corde." However, even Rausch admits that the
long-term implications of a national fiber-optic
network are too important. The study for Metz
will provide for the eventual conversion from
coaxial cable to fiber optics.
There is an enormous enthusiasm for cable
on the part of municipal authorities throughout
France. Mayors and other local politicians see
enlarged TV and video services as vote get-
ters. Well over 100 local authorities, represen-
ting more than 10 million inhabitants, have
made initial contact with French Telecom, and
in about 40 cities (7 million inhabitants)
technical and Financial feasibility studies are
already under w^r. Although profitability is
not the only concern, it is certainly at the top
of the list of concerns.
Perhaps the biggest support for fiber optics
has come from Jacques Chirac, the Mayor of
Paris. Chirac declared Paris ready to let the
P.T.T. begin installing for 50,000 homes, star-
ting in 1985. A condition he would impose,
however, is that the City of Paris be given more
freedom to program the system to ensure
financial viability. What concerns Rausch,
Chirac and others is the H. A. policy to limit
foreign programming on cable to 30%, an
amount which goes against the potential for
imminent cable programming from present
and forthcoming Luxembourg and British
satellites, as well as transborder programm-
ing from nearby Germany. Rausch's coaxial
system could relay programs from these
sources right now; Chirac's Paris fiber-optic
system could recoup some of the enormous
costs with leased channels and advertising. A
recent survey concluded that 19% of Parisians
surveyed would pay the required 750 francs
(about $95) signup tax and 120 francs per
month ($15) to receive nine channels. In ten
years, it is estimated that 50% of Paris could
be subscribing to cable, or nearly 3 million
people.
Thus, there is a strong financial pressure
borne on the one hand by the Franch cities,
who see cable as a potential revenue source
if left in a free market, and on the other hand,
by program suppliers, notably from the U.S.
HBO and the major studios are waiting in the
wings with the American-developed Coronet
satellite project developed in association with
Luxembourg. To them, a deregulated French
cable market would be another goldmine. It
should be noted that one of the most popular
programs on French TV is Dallas; it has been
estimated that 60 % of entertainment program-
ming on Western European TV screens came
from non-European sources.
Whither Access In France?
One of the conspicuous absences in French
cable policy, as set by the Mission Schreiner
and the Haute Authorite, is any provision for
public access as we know it. Although the pro-
gram bank plan provides subsidies for local
groups to engage production houses to pro-
duce programs on their interests for cable,
there is no provision for direct access or train-
ing. The experimental cable system in Greno-
ble did produce some local access program-
ming but it was largely discontinued due to
the lack of an audience-
After consulting the Mission Schreiner on
this lack of access interest, some explanations
can be offered. First of all, France is still in
the very early stages of cable. The fascination
of any channels over three is still an impor-
tant element. Moreover, French society is
highly structured into professions. Few French
people, it has been said, could ever imagine
that they could produce their own program-
ming. Another element is that French media
are often sticklers for very high production
values. Film is still the medium of choice in
broadcast production, especially on location.
The concept of the access process and message
being more important than the "look" of the
show is still far off. Nonetheless, the Mission
Schreiner estimates that once the City of Paris
receives cable for a few years, the many
special interest groups which have used film
to dramatize their cause will create the
pressure that will eventually result in access
provisions. Another potential resource is the
strong regional identify of areas of the coun-
try such as the Provence, Brittany and Nor-
mandy, where a flourishing amount of poetry,
social discourse and song is produced in
regional dialects. Some of this has already
found its way on to the French Regional Net-
work (FR-3), and it is likely that these groups
will have a voice on cable systems in their own
cities.
Adam Steg is Director of Media Relations for
the French Cultural Services in New Orleans.
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16 Community Television Review
Community Video in Israel —
A View From Kibbutzim
By George C. Stoney
Ein Dor is one of the jewels of Israel's
kibbutz movement which now has 130,000
members in over 300 cooperative commu-
nities.
Founded in the late 1940s by Socialist
enthusiasts coming mostly from Europe
and North America, Ein Dor soon devel-
oped an agricultural base using "appro-
priate technology,' ' and prospered using
only a small percent of the available labor.
They subsequently turned to manufactur-
ing and have prospered even more with
the production of high quality cable, in-
cluding co-axial cable which is essential
for cable TV.
A few years ago Ein Dor created its own
closed-circuit cable system with results so
familiar that reciting them will set stu-
dents of modern communications technol-
ogy to nodding their heads in recognition.
First came a community antenna tall
enough to reach beyond the Israeli gov-
ernment's single (and heavily censored)
channel to bring in programs from Syria,
Jordan and Egypt. "Some people wanted
to improve their language skills," ex-
plained Yeshoshua Zamir when I visited
Ein Dor a few years ago, "and a lot more
wanted to see the wider coverage of inter-
national sporting events." Viewing took
place in two large meeting rooms and be-
came a popular group activity, especially
when there was an important soccer match
on. Then the governors of the kibbutz de-
cided to extend cable to individual homes,
and the results were quite predictable.
People no longer watched TV in groups
Many came to the communal dining hall
with trays so they could return home to
eat in front of their TV sets. Attendance at
cultural functions declined sharply. Even
attendance at the weekly community meet-
ings dropped off. The cooperative spirit
of the kibbutz was threatened. What to
do?
I first met Zamir when he was ponder-
ing this question. He had just served his
term as head of the kibbutz and was back
in the factory making cable when I came
to Israel on a USIA-sponsored tour to talk
about community media. He had read
about community cable in Canada and the
U.S. and was wondering if there was a
way they could use their closed circuit sys-
tem to reinforce group awareness. Thus
began a friendship, enriched by frequent
exchanges of letters as Zamir struggled to
persuade Ein Dor's managers that spend-
ing precious foreign exchange on a porta-
pak was a wise investment. It took more
than two years.
Last fall Zamir (an American who
joined Ein Dor in 1947) traveled across
the U.S. to see for himself what cable ac-
cess was like in this country, bringing
copies of some representative tapes from
Ein Dor and from a neighboring kibbutz.
All were originated on Beta Vi " in the
PAL format. We had them transferred to
Va " NTSC format so Americans could see
how Ein Dor is using the technology. (The
photographs accompanying this article
were copied from some of these tapes.)
Though spoken in Hebrew and Arabic
and with the color and technical quality
greatly diminished by the multiple trans-
fers, the tapes, nevertheless, convey a
spirit of cooperation, compassion and in-
tellectual intensity that makes them mod-
els of video as a community medium.
The Tapes Are Bitter and Sweet
First, the bitter: We Protest the War in
Lebanon recounts a trip by Ein Dor's
video group to Jerusalem the day after the
1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Here
for the first time in their lives they experi-
enced intervention by the police when they
tried to speak out. Two days later Zamir 1 s
own son was killed in that same war,
"Tapes like this are very important for
people in kibbutzim to see/' explained
Carlos Ierushalmi, the video training of-
ficer for Givat Haviva, the central educa-
tional authority for HaShoner HaTzair,
the more radical wing of the kibbutz
movement. "It is too easy for us to live in
kibbutzim, isolated from the realities of
Israeli life. So we often deliberately go out
to find what ordinary Israeli citizens
think,"
How We Pick Cotton in Ein Dor was
made by the small cadre of people who
still farm to show how methods have
changed since a majority of the members
were engaged in agriculture. The low
angle shots of machines and the montage
cutting that makes cotton pickers "dance"
to Israeli pop music suggests that all those
Eisenstein films featured in Ein Dor's
movie series have been seen with some at-
tention.
First Night Without Mother explains
how and why Ein Dor takes in 30-odd
children from troubled homes each year
for schooling and nurturing. It gives the
youngsters a chance to introduce them-
selves by talking about their hobbies and
their hopes for the year. The tape was
played five times in the first week the chil-
dren were in kibbutz so they could be
greeted as individuals when seen in the
communal dining hall and around the
pool.
Arab Wedding is a thirty-minute ac-
count, beautifully and thoughtfully shot,
of a celebration in a village literally just
across the road from Ein Dor but which,
for most Israelis, remains an alien (per-
haps even an alienating) experience. The
tape was made by Ein Dor volunteers
headed by a plumber who worked with an
Arab plumber (the brother of the groom).
The event unfolds chronologically and
with precise observations through the day-
long preparation of food, the annointing
of the groom amid male dancing the night
before, and on through the day and eve-
ning of the main ceremony. The tape was
The brother of the groom from an Arab
Wedding,
Community Television Review 1 7
seen on cassette players in the Arab village
as well as on Ein Dor's closed circuit
cable.
A companion tape is: Making A Brazier
the Traditional Way in which the resident
archaeologist (and also a school teacher)
from Ein Dor is seen working along side
an Arab woman who outlines the proce-
dure while Jewish and Arab children lend
a hand.
"My goal/* the Archaeologist notes,
"is to make members of Ein Dor aware
that other people also have traditions that
run deep in this soil."
It was the possibility of using video as a
device to encourage some kind of dialogue
between Israelis and Arabs that first at-
tracted Yehoshua Zamir to the medium,
and it is a dream he has not forsaken in
spite of all the discouragements. A gifted
stills photographer, he has produced two
books and several exhibitions dealing with
this matter. His most recent is a volume of
text and photographs about his son killed
in Lebanon. An English edition is to be
published in the U.S. in 1985,
Closed Circuit Dialogue
Other tapes in the collection include one
in which young people indicate what their
role should be on the kibbutz— the year
following their obligatory army service—
which lasts 36 months for men and 24
months for women, This tape was made in
preparation for a meeting of the entire
membership where the matter was to be
decided. Repeatedly on the tape the
speakers comment on how much easier
they feel about expressing themselves on
video than when facing the entire assem-
bly in person.
Other tapes celebrate festivals, record
dances and promote a clean-up campaign
with emphasis on what children can do.
Video Shock
Today Ein Dor is one of 50-odd kib-
butzim using video and closed circuit cable
for community development. HaShoner
HaTzair, also has a video center where
Carlos Ierushalmi works full time. The
center does editing and duplicating for its
member communities and makes certain
training and informational tapes useful to
all.
"But the most important thing we do is
Video Shock, which is how I like to de-
scribe our workshops in community
video/' Ierushalmi told me recently while
on a visit to New York University's video
facility, Each session of Video Shock
brings 36 kibbutz members together for
three weeks of intensive fieldwork and
theoretical training. The former has been
designed by Prof. Nisan Belkan of Tel
Aviv University; the latter by Prof. Dov
Shinhar of Hebrew University in Jerusa-
lem, Working in teams of six, the students
"are at it from eight in the morning until
nine at night, six days a week, officially.
Then they often carry on until two in the
morning when editing begins."
"We want to stress video production
for social purposes. We don't want to
compete with TV." Getting that point
across seems particularly difficult, hense
the stress put on theoretical studies from
the beginning of the course. Often tapes
made by the center itself are sharply criti-
cal of kibbutz life and the workshops en-
courage the students in Video Shock to
take a similar attitude.
For the present, almost all video in kib-
butzim is done by volunteers working in
their spare time. "Few get days off to do
video, but this is changing as the value of
the work is becoming recognized,"
In teaching the ethics of video, the cen-
ter encounters the different attitudes peo-
ple have toward censorship in video as op-
posed to print. Most kibbutzim have their
own newsletters in which everyone is free
to express his/her opinion without ques-
tion, though the printing and distribution
of the papers is sponsored by the central
administration. It seems much harder to
persuade administrations to take the same
hands-off policy when video is involved,
though some do. For example, most kib-
butzim forbid personal attacks on their
video circuits though these are routine in
newsletters and are often relished by the
readers. Yet, when compared to the con-
straints of Israeli television's single
government- dominated channel, kibbutz
video is refreshingly free.
"The video cassette libraries are Israel's
second channel," said Carlos. "I think
Israel has more cassette players per capita
than any country in the world. People are
demanding that the government give us a
true second channel. When it comes I feel
sure our kibbutz video movement will
have a positive influence on its content
and its outlook."
George Stoney is a noted filmmaker and
professor of film and video at New York
University,
Still photo from We Protest the War in Lebanon, in which protestors are restrained by police.
18 Community Television Review
The Use of Video in Ein Dor
The following is excerpted from a letter
dated July 1984 from Yenoshua Zamir.
Zamir outlines two ways in which Ein Dor
has recently used video creatively.
An Experience Never To Be
Forgotten
On the 4th of July 1976, Jannet and
Ezra were welcomed back home to Ein
Dor after the worst week in their life . . .
in Antebe. They tell us again what they
went through, and many others tell the
story of the day of return. Though our
kibbutz is 36 years in Ein Dor, never was
there a greater explosion of joy and tears.
It was a welcome never to be forgotten,
where the entire kibbutz did every possible
thing to show their love for the young
couple. This was documented at the time
on 8 mm and still photos.
On the 4th of July 1984, the video pro-
gram was aired in Ein Dor and no one was
seen on the sidewalks of the kibbutz. I can
only speak for Rama (my wife) and myself.
It was so exciting and moving that at times
we couldn't see the TV because tears
clouded our vision.
Addressing Financial
Difficulties
We also used video as a part of the pro-
cess to involve the community in solving
our financial problems.
The kibbutz was given a detailed report
of the increasing financial difficulties. If
we want to continue with our present stan-
dard of living and continue to invest in
building homes so we can absorb our chil-
dren and others who wish to join us, we
must find ways of increasing our income
and/or cutting down on expenses. It is not
simple to increase the income, because we
are aging and our founding members are
working less hours per day.
On Saturday night, the general assem-
bly, which meets every week and decides
all major issues of kibbutz life, would try
to deal with the problem. The video was
used as follows:
Friday morning, during breakfast time,
a "sidewalk interview* ' was held right out-
side the kibbutz dining hall. Members
were asked: Are you aware of our present
financial difficulties? What can be done
to improve the situation? How can a maxi-
mum number of people be brought to par-
ticipate in the process — thinking, suggest-
ing, and carrying out , . . ?
On Saturday afternoon at 17:30 there
was a live cablecast to all homes in the kib-
butz. The following items were included
in the program:
# a short satire about the economic
situation in the entire country;
f a discussion from a panel of "ex-
perts": the treasurer, secretary, factory
manager, and farm manager from the kib-
butz;
i a call-in from members of the kib-
butz; and
# selections from answers to questions
on the sidewalk interviews.
The program was ended with: "We
hope to see you all at the general meeting
tonight at 21 :00." Not to lose our sense of
proportion, the program was called "To
Laugh or To Cry?"
At the general meeting that night, more
people came than usual. The participation
was good and active. No decisions were
taken. The search for solutions continues.
The above two different forms of use of
video in kibbutz are of course both
"valid." The Antebe film was prepared in
the course of a few weeks. The "eco-
nomic" tape and panel was prepared in
one day. There are many other uses of
video for kibbutz community, as can be
seen in the enclosed description of tapes
prepared in the past in Ein Dor, However,
considering the size of the community —
450 members and total population of 750
— it is impossible to build a regular daily
or even weekly video program based on
well prepared and edited programs. There
simply will not be the people and time to
do this regularly. However, the specific ex-
ample of the above use of video as part of
a general process of democratic involve-
ment in issues of the kibbutz, is in my
opinion the real chance of positive use of
video in kibbutz. This requires light, non-
expensive V% " equipment. Our editing is
done with two Betamex, and is perfectly
satisfactory. Every time, the perfectionists
and professionals take over, and buy 3 A "
equipment and an expensive editing sys-
tem, less people participate because it
is more cumbersome. In the end we have
fewer video producers, and we lose our
purpose: to use video as a democratizing
agent.
— Yehoshua Zamir
NFLCP thanks the companies who provided
financial support and free services to the
National Convention
American Television and Communications Corporation
Daniels Associates Incorporated
Group W Cable Incorporated
Metrovision Cable
United Cable Corporation
BizNet, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The Learning Channel
Mile Hi Cablevision
United Cable of Colorado
COMMUNITY
MANAGING THE
MANAGING THE HIDDEN RESOURCES
National Federation of Local Cable Programmers
1984 National Conference
CASSETTE TAPES
QUANTITY
ACCESS MANAGEMENT
. (1) Developing Access Funding and Managing Budget
. (2) Access Management
. (3) Volunteer and Intern Management
, (5) Audience Development and Management
, (6) Insurance Needs of the Access Operation
. (7) Access Programming Formats and Technique
QUANTITY
ARTS ORGANIZATIONS AND ARTS INSTITUTIONS
(33) Transforming a Stage Production to Video
(34) Creative Formats for Arts Cable Programming
(35) Developing Programming for Regional and National Distribution
(37) Cable as an Audience Development Mechanism
(38) What are the "Real" Quality Issues?
(39) Plugging into Access on a Limited Budget
LOCAL ORIGINATION AND ADVERTISING
. (9) Local Origination and Access as a Cable Marketing Tool
. (10) Local Origination Management
.(11) Packaging and Promoting Local Programming
. (13) Strategies for Local Revenue Development
. (14) Raising Local Programming Quality
. (15) Commercial Insertion Opportunities
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND CABLE COMMUNICATIONS
. (17) Establishing, Managing and Programming Municipal Access Channels
. (18) Assessing the Legal Risks of Local Cable Regulations
. (19) Municipal Utilization of the Institutional Network
. (21) Noxiprofit Access Corporations and Local Government
. (22) Successful Municipal Programming: Formats and Techniques
. (23) The Evolving Role of the Cable Administrator
EDUCATORS AND LIBRARIANS IN CABLE
. (25) Establishing and Managing the Educational Program Operation: K-12
. (26) Libraries and Cable Communications
. (27) Selecting and Developing Uses of the Institutional Network
. (29) Kids and Cable
. (30) Strategies for Involving Faculty in The New Technologies
LABOR AND INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS
. (40) Independent Producers and Their Relationship to Access Centers and Budgets
. (41) Local Labor Access Programming
. (42) New Initiatives and the Independent Producer
.(43) Copy wright and Contract Issues of the Local Cable Producer
.(45) Funding Sources for Access and Independent Producers
.(46) National Labor Cable Programming
. (47) Independents and Public Television
ADVANCED ISSUES
.(48) Commercial Leased Access: Its Role and Value
. (49) Developing a Telecommunications Plan
.(51) Community Programming and the Law
,(53) Cable Industry Cutbacks and Restructuring: Case Studies
. (54) Technical Issues of Interconnection
. (55) Technicians Tips
CABLE POLICY
. (56) Primer of Cable Policy Issues
.(57) Update on the Status of Federal Cable Legislation
.(58) Cable's Competitors
. (59) Renewal and Renegotiation of the Cable Franchise
.(63) Whose First Amendment is it Anyway?
. COLUME 1 TOTAL
. COLUME 2 TOTAL
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Colorado Residents add 4.6% Tax .
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20 Community Television Review
Cable Comes to West Germany
By Bettina Brandtner-Sego
LUDWIGSHAFEN WEST GER-
MANY — In this lower Rhine industrial
city that serves as headquarters for one of
the world's largest chemical concerns, the
state government of Rhineland Palatinate
has funded a pilot project that could
change the broadcast system that has ex-
isted here for over 30 years. At the site of
a once prosperous stockyard complex, a
modern, pristene, two-story brick-facade
building, completed last July, houses this
pilot project. The building bears the offi-
cial sounding name — ANSTALT FUR
KABLEKOMMUNIKATION (Institute
for Cable Communication) or AKK as it is
called here. To comprehend the impor-
tance and the impact of the pilot project,
one has to understand the existing broad-
casting system in West Germany.
Present Situation and
Development
There are presently two major networks
(with the call letters ARD and ZDF) and
three regional channels in west Germany.
These broadcasting stations, in contrast to
the privately owned and commercially
printed press here, are organized as a
public broadcasting system. They are fi-
nanced through a state regulated fee paid
to each television household. Additional
revenue is generated by allowing a twenty-
minute block of commercials in the early
evening.
To initiate the cable television system
here, the prime ministers of the West Ger-
man states (Lander) in May 1978 approved
the concept of four cable television pilot
projects in Ludwigshafen, Munich, Dort-
mund and West Berlin. In November 1981
it was decided that these four projects
should be financed by increasing the tele-
vision and radio fee 20 Pfenning (about 8
cents) to DM16.25 (about $6,50) per
month for each television household. This
increase will generate a DM140 million
fund to be distributed evenly among the
four projects. In addition to establishing
the funding, the state governors set up a
commission to simultaneously study the
effects of the cable television here on the
printed media, on the existing TV and film
industries, on the job market and on fam-
ily life.
The First Cable Project
The forerunner among these four pilot
projects is the AKK. Founded on June 15,
1982, the AKK, unlike the other three
projects is operating under a new state law
which allows commercial companies to
begin broadcasting through the AKK after
obtaining the proper permit from state
authorities. The AKK, under the direction
of Claus Detjen, a journalist with 20 years
of experience in the West German broad-
cast media, has been commissioned to
coordinate the programs, control the proj-
ect and operate the transmission center in
Ludwigshafen,
The executive body of the AKK is the
Assembly, consisting of 40 members and a
three-member Executive Board, The As-
sembly and its Board serve as honorary
members and represent a cross section of
the West German society. The Assembly's
responsibility is to see that the legal re-
quirements are followed and to grant
licences for program applicants. The Ex-
ecutive Board supervises the general man-
ager, Mr. Detjen and his staff.
The Technical Capacity
The cable system of the Ludwigshafen
project is designed to pass 150,000 house-
holds by the end of 1985, mainly in the
city of Ludwigshafen and several sur-
rounding communities. The AKK will
transmit its programs directly into the
Ludwigshafen households via copper co-
axial cable. To reach the surrounding
communities in the project area, the pro-
grams are sent via fiber optic cable to one
of the main West German signal transmis-
sion towers located across the Rhine in
Mannheim. From there the signal is sent
to the smaller receiving stations in the out-
lying areas and then brought into the
homes by copper coaxial cable.
Subscriber Costs
The West German Telecommunication
Service (PTT) is placing the transmission
cable in the test area and is installing a
cable connection box in each house. How-
ever, to receive the cable service, the
homeowner needs to have a private con-
tractor extend the cable from the connec-
tion box to the television set which costs
approximately DM300.00 (about $120.00)
PTT van with the slogan: "Cable; More programs, better sound and picture. **
Community Television Review 21
Also, a one-time connection fee of
DM125,00 (about $50.00) must be paid to
the PTT by the homeowner. The monthly
fee is DM11.00 (about $4.50) of which
DM6.00 goes to the PTT and DM5.00 to
the AKK. (If a converter is needed in the
case of an older non-cable-ready television
set, the subscriber must pay an additional
one time fee of DM200.00 (about $80.00)
plus a monthly rental fee of DM2.00
(about $0.80).) The minimum costs of
West German cable television subscribers
are DM425.00 connection fee and
DM11.00 per month.
Cable Programs
A subscriber in the pilot project area
will receive 19 television and 19 radio
channels. This is expected to increase to
24 television and 24 radio channels during
the three-year test period for which the
pilot project is funded. Of the 19 televi-
sion channels, 11 are existing European
programs including all national and re-
gional German channels as well as the
three French networks. The eight special
channels include two commercially-spon-
sored networks (with call letters EPF and
PKS), the London-based SKY-TV (a
movie channel in England transmitted via
Satellite), a music channel, an educa-
tional channel, a local access channel
("Offener Kanal"— literally open chan-
nel) and a community service channel
("Cooperative Burgerservice" — citizens*
service). The local access channel is pat-
terned after the U.S. system and is
completely new to the West German tele-
vision audience. The "Offener Kanal"
enables every resident to produce and air
his production at no cost, The community
service channel "Cooperative Burgerser-
vice" makes it possible for organizations
to produce and air programs on a regular
basis for a small fee. The EPF ("Erste Pri-
vate Fernsehgesellschaft" or first private
television company) and the PKS (Pro-
grammgesellschaft fur Kable — und Satel-
htenrundfunk" or company for cable —
and satellite television) are also unique in
the West German market in that they are
totally funded by private investment, and
will generate revenues through the sale of
commercial time. Present government re-
strictions permit a maximum 12 minutes
of commercial time for each 60 minutes of
programming, and the commercials may
not interrupt tfie program, itself.
SKY-TV in London will broadcast its
programs through the AKK via the recent-
ly launched European Communication
Satellite (ECS 1). The satellite is a jointly
funded effort of the European Communi-
ty Postal Services of which the PTT is a
part. The PTT has leased 2 channels on
ECS 1 for broadcast of both the public
network and private commercial pro-
grams.
The first successful test broadcast from
London to the Ludwigshafen area via
ECS 1 was completed in December. The
project in Ludwigshafen serves as a pilot
for the future development of German
satellite television programs. Beginning in
January, tests will take place for expanding
German satellite television via the ECS. A
syndicate of private German program-
mers, among which PKS plays a leading
role, is presently being formed. Next to the
AKK in Ludwigshafen an up-link-station
will be built.
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22 Community Television Review
Technical Facilities at the AKK
While the AKK is not permitted to pro-
duce it's own programs, it supplies other
programmers, primarily participants of
the local access and community service
channels, with a fully equipped television
studio, remote video equipment, editing
facilities, three broadcasting studios and
facilities to air incoming productions in all
formats.
Financial Aspects of the
Pilot Project
Since December 1982, approximately
DM10 million has been spent for building
the AKK operation center in Ludwig-
shafen, and an additional DM13.5 million
for the technical equipment at the center.
The PTT is expected to spend DM100 mil-
lion for cabling the pilot project area.
For the three-year test period, the AKK
like the other three pilot projects has a
DM35 million budget from the television
fee. To generate additional revenue, the
AKK is permitted to take a 10% share of
the total advertising revenue of each of
the programmers in the cable system and
charge for the use of its technical facili-
ties. However, the AKK intends to wait
with these fees until a minimum of 25,000
subscribers have been obtained and the
potential for at least 100,000 subscribers
exist.
Prospects for the Future
The immediate benefits of cable televi-
sion to the West German system are ob-
vious: improved reception, a greater num-
ber of channels and a public awareness
and participation in media. If the four
pilot projects are a success, and cable tele-
vision is accepted by the public and the
European satellite broadcasting system is
expanded, West Germany hopes to be at
the forefront of the communication
revolution.
Bettina Brandtner-Sego is with the AKK's
Information Center in Ludwigshafen.
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Community Television Review 23
"Offener Kanal": An Access Experiment
By Christa Hategan
A special feature of the experimental
system in Ludwigshafen is the 4 'Offener
Kanal" or Open Channel, Open Channel is
modeled after public access in the United
States, and has a professionally equipped
studio facility with six full-time staff.
There has been a tremendous response
to Open Channel. During its first three
months of operation there were 72 pro-
grams lasting 55 hours (about four and
one-half hours a week).
The nature of the programming would
be familiar to any student of public access
in the United States. A doctor produced a
documentary on the work in an emergency
ward; a fire fighter produced a videotape
on his work shift; and a butcher developed
a program on body building. Music and
dance are favorite topics. In addition,
peace groups, university groups, and reli-
gious organizations frequently use the
channel.
However, scheduling has been a big
problem. The legislation that created
Open Channel stipulates that producers
can reserve only one block of time on a
strict first-come, first served basis, and
cannot reserve more time until after the
date of the initial cablecast. For example,
if a producer plans a three-part series to
be cablecast every Thursday between 7:00
and 8:00 p.m., that producer may be able
to obtain time the first Thursday, but it is
unlikely there will be time available for the
second Thursday evening (since he or she
must wait until after the first installment
to reserve time for the second installment).
Consequently there are no regular pro-
grams, and Open Channel is unable to
cultivate an audience.
Ironically, there is a lot of dead air
time, because the tremendous demand is
for fairly concentrated time slots. The
studio is open between 9:00 a.m. and 1 1
p.m., and anyone can go on the system
during these times if space is available. On
some days the channel is empty all day,
but there is usually a crowd on weekends.
Ludwigshafen also has a special channel
for citizens organizations, and this con-
sortium is operating smoothly, "Coopera-
tive Burgerservice" or Citizens Service is
run by about 20 institutions: chruches,
schools, health organizations, and public
interest groups. They rent the professional
studio for roughly $25 per hour and con-
tribute a structured program seven days a
week. They cablecast their material from
4:30 to 6:30 p.m., and repeat the pro-
grams the next morning. The content re-
sembles public service announcements
that are aired in the United States.
Christa Hategan is from Hamburg, West
Germany.
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Community Television Review 25
International Telecommunications and
Information Policy
By Helen Weiss
(Edited by Christopher Sterling; Commu-
nications Press, Inc., Washington, B.C.
1984)
Communications Press, Inc., recently
released a hefty two-part book that
includes proceedings from a 1983 sympo-
sium on policy options currently being
explored by the United States in interna-
tional telecommunications and informa-
tion. The symposium was based on a
report issued several months earlier by the
National Telecommunications and Infor-
mation Administration (NTIA). That
government report, which addresses the
long-range goals in this field, comprises
the second half of the International Tele-
communications and Information Policy
publication.
Except for students of public policy,
this book will probably be useful to cable
access professionals only for reference
purposes. The bulk of the presentations at
the George Washington University sym-
posium, deal with the policy options for
telecommunications in the field's broadest
context— in terms of the past and of future
prospects for telegraph, telephones, radio,
television and direct broadcast satellite.
Within this broad framework, two major
sets of options emerge: those of the U.S.
telecommunications industry heavily in-
fluenced by the private sector, and those
available to most other countries, both
"developed" and "developing" nations
where telecommunications are by in large
determined by their governments.
Christopher Sterling, who edited this
publication and is the Director of the
George Washington University Center for
Telecommunications Studies, co-authored
the introduction with FCC attorney
Stephen Thompson. They explain that in-
ternational telecommunications and in-
formation is important to the U.S. in
three ways which include: a marketplace
for U.S. service providers projected to be
a world market of $85 billion by 1987; a
U.S. service-oriented economy in which
many banking and financial institutions
are becoming increasingly dependent on
rapid information; and finally, cultivation
of an effective international network to
increase access to education, public health
and safety while creating safeguards for
national security. These reasons explain
how and why the U.S. private sector
equates "free flow of information" with
the desire of U.S. businesses to protect
this country's long-range economic in-
terests.
However, the United States, while it has
wielded considerable influence in the de-
velopment of telecommunications world-
wide, has remained relatively alone in
pushing the concepts of competition and
deregulation in this field. The majority of
countries still seem to prefer a single
government-controlled monopoly as the
conduit for telecommunications services
and rates. According to Sterling and
Thompson, most countries do not typical-
ly have a "competitive environment." All
services are provided as "public services"
with the revenues generally applied to re-
couping investments on telecommunica-
tions facilities and subsidizing other pub-
lic services, in particular the postal
systems.
For this reason, there is an obvious con-
flict between these two philosophies in
areas such as exporting and importing of
television programming. In the eyes of
some U.S. policymakers, countries which
are potential buyers of programming pro-
duced in the U.S. have not only set up
economic barriers, but also "noneconomic
barriers" in the name of national sover-
eignty and cultural autonomy, especially
in the areas of television and radio. One
example is Canada where there is concern
about processing data abroad because of
possible political sabotage. There are also
worries about direct broadcast satellite
(DBS), which can reach any audience
without intermediaries. While some of the
symposium presenters addressed the issue
of cultural autonomy for the lesser "de-
veloped" countries, others pointed to The
Clyne Report in which there are concerns
about the problems Canadian children
have in identifying political leaders, public
figures and folk heroes.
The NTIA report further details the
fear which a number of nations have ex-
pressed about DBS "seriously affecting a
nation's autonomy to choose its own form
of television, and the "spillover effect"
that seems to reflect the nature of tele-
vision." The NTIA document further
notes that "governments recognize that
television is the most powerful mass
medium created by man" and that each
nation, including the United States, should
determine for itself the "essential charac-
ter of the national television system."
In short, DBS is looked to in the eco-
nomically "developing" countries as the
most practical technology (especially for
nations with a single language and a com-
mon culture) to establish regional net-
works. However, the NTIA report con-
cludes that direct satellite broadcasting
across borders may pose a threat to the in-
terest of nations and their ability to deter-
mine there own television destiny.
On the other hand, the report recog-
nizes that especially for developing na-
tions with minimum terrestrial facilities
for national broadcasting and only one or
two stations limited to larger cities, DBS
could be used "to educate, disseminate in-
formation for the improvement of health
and economic well-being."
According to the NTIA report, the
Soviet Union initially (and later Sweden
and Canada) struggled for more than a
decade to develop an international policy
that addresses these concerns. It is now
expected that within the next several years,
DBS may be used widely to provide tele-
vision services to remote areas with bad
reception. The technology will also be
utilized to add new channel capacity to the
existing national systems and to "spur
on" international trade and industrial
development.
Amid all this concern about the danger
and the potentials of DBS, one wonders
when local programming and public ac-
cess will be addressed by international
policymakers.
Helen Weiss is Executive Director of
Marin Community Video in California.
26 Community Television Review
Optimism Reigns at NFLCP Convention in Denver
By Paul D'Ari
"Community Programming: Managing the
Hidden Resources ," NFLCP's seventh annual
Convention held in mid-July in Denver,
demonstrated once again that community
television is a continually growing institution
throughout the United States. The 725 people
attending the three-day session made it the
largest NFLCP Convention ever. This 40 per-
cent increase in attendance from last year
solidified the legitimacy and strength of
NFLCP and the community programming
movement.
Those attending were representatives from
access centers, local origination operations,
local governments, schools, libraries, unions,
churches, and other organizations. The nature
of the audience reaffirmed the notion that
community programming has now come of
age. While the earliest NFLCP conventions
were dominated by access advocates with
limited influence, the most recent conventions
have been well attended by government of-
ficials, industry insiders and establishment
organizations with much more clout.
Perhaps the greatest indication of communi-
ty television's recent growth is the quality of
programs being produced on the local level.
At the Convention's Awards Banquet, NFLCP
recognized the winners of the Hometown USA
Video Festival, Excerpts from all award win-
ning programs were shown at the banquet, and
it was evident from these short sequences that
the quality of community programming has
improved dramatically.
In fact, several large commercial ventures
are seeking community programming to in-
clude in their service packages. For example,
the Home Theater Network (with over 250,000
subscribers) will include excerpts from a
number of Hometown USA winners. They will
appear on the weekly program, "Traveling
America:' Nickolodeon (over 12,000,000
subscribers) is also seriously considering ex-
cerpts from six of the Hometown USA win-
ners. Another outlet for outstanding
Hometown USA programs is the Community
Programming Network (CPN) created by
American Television and Communications
Corporation (ATC). CPN is carried on a
number of ATC systems and reaches 800,000
subscribers. Final Iv, the Learning Channel
(formerly the Appelachian Community Ser-
vice Network) has a well endowed project to
showcase the works of independent producers,
and is also interested in Hometown USA award
winners.
There was other evidence at the Convention
that community programming has obtained
greater legitimacy. Dick Holcombe, Vice
President of ATC, told convention participants
that "community programming is cable's
secret weapon. . . Community programming is
a marketing tool; it is a public relations tool;
and it is also a refranchising tool. Nothing can
demonstrate a cable operator's concern for a
community better than community program-
ming can."
Similar sentiments were expressed by Victor
Livingstone, Editor in Chief of CableVision
Magazine. Livingstone indicated that com-
munity programming is an essential cable
service.
"I can live without HBO because I can rent
movies. And my kids can live without MTV
although they enjoy it. However, community
programming is much more important.
"Cable operators need you. You are a
political necessity for them... You are to cable
operators what kissing babies are to politi-
cians."
In spite of the rise in stature of community
programming in recent years, there was some
concern at the Convention for the survival of
community programming. This year's Con-
vention was held in the midst of attacks on
community prograrnming from all sides.
There were discussions on industry cut-backs,
which are threatening local origination and ac-
cess programming all across the country, par-
ticularly in the recently franchised large ur-
ban areas. There was even more concern for
the FCC's reinforcement of these cut-backs in
the Miami Decision and the FCC's Public
Notice of March 7, 1984. In light of the cur-
rent predisposition of the FCC, the recent deci-
sion by the U.S. Supreme Court in Crisp
(which may give the FCC wider authority to
preempt local governments in cable regula-
tion) also received considerable attention at
the three day gathering. Finally, there was a
serious concern over Congressional legislation
which is threatening the foundation of funding
for public access.
The teleconference on the second day of the convention featured proponents of community
programming in Denver and representatives from the FCC and NCTA in Washington, DC
Community Television Review 27
rOMMUNIT Y PROGRA MMING
VV C MA [N AG I N G THE HIDDEN RESOURC 1 5 )
Industry Cutbacks
The widespread industry cutbacks on com-
munity programming was a major concern at
the convention. Many participants were from
Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, New Orleans,
Omaha, Atlanta, Miami, and other cities
where community programming is being
threatened.
In his keynote address Steve Suitts told the
gathering of community programmers that
public access and local origination program-
ming are in trouble.
"Whenever the economy worsens and in-
terest rates are high, cable owners begin to cut
corners and usually begin by proposing to
reduce or eliminate local programming. The
reason they start there is simple: cable owners
view public access and often local origination
as major expenses that generate little or no
revenue/'
"These cycles are for public access the
cycles of poverty. With each cycle local pro-
gramming in cable is substantially injured and
is less able in the future to realize its oppor-
tunities and promise to the communities. In-
deed, I cannot think of a single example when
an initial substantial commitment to public ac-
cess was reduced for economic reasons but in
better economic conditions was restored to its
original commitment. Once it is lost, it is lost
for all time to come."
"[W]e are in the depths of another
crisis... [and] most of the best moments for
public access have now passed.'*
The community programming cutbacks
were also the topic of discussion during the
teleconference between community program-
ming proponents at the convention in Denver,
ant NCTA and FCC officials in Washington,
DC. The teleconference addressed the ques-
tion, "Will the Marketplace Deliver Com-
munity Programming?*' A hypothetical case
study was presented in which a cable operator
that promised substantial innovative services,
later approached the city for major system cut-
backs, including significant reductions in sup-
port for community programming.
Char Beales, NCTA Vice President for Pro-
gramming and Marketing, defended the
operator's cutbacks. "The cable operator is in
business and makes his business by pleasing
his subscribers. If there are people who want
the service, the cable operator will be more
than happy to provide it. I go back to the fun-
damental question though: do you provide
more than most people actually want? The
cable operator is in the business of bringing
out what his subscribers want and fulfilling
that need. In this case they don't really want
all channels... so the operator is cutting
back... If there is a demand for more chan-
nels later, then a good businessman would pro-
vide more channels, if that's what the
subscribers really want."
"There are a number of things that bother
me," responded Frank Spiller, President of
Francis Spiller Associates, "when I hear this
notion that community programming is a ser-
vice that not many people want. The fact is
we are dealing with a whole new kind of televi-
sion. Yet, the tendency is always to evaluate
it by the rules of conventional broadcast televi-
sion. We have to break this cycle somehow and
get on to the business of using this great com-
munications opportunity for the benefit of
communities.*'
Sue Miller Buske, Executive Director of
NFLCP, argued that cutbacks of community
programming are coming before the medium
has had a chance to develop. "It typically takes
3 to 4 years for community programming to
mature. What we are seeing around the coun-
try is that one year or one and a half years
into the operation of local programming, there
will be a request for a major cutback. The
operator will say there are not enough people
using the equipment and the channel is not ac-
tive enough.
"One of the things I find interesting is this:
will the marketplace deliver anything if peo-
ple don't know it exists?. . . You have to educate
the public and that is not a process that takes
two weeks, two months, or two years. It is a
long term process... and it is not that much
different than developing and marketing any
other new product."
Access Payments and Franchise
Fees
The convention was in an uproar over the
FCC*s recent support of industry cutbacks by
pre-empting local governments in a number
of cases, particularly in the decision on
Miami, Florida's petition for a waiver of the
3 percent franchise fee limitation. In that case
the FCC staff granted the waiver but ruled that
access payments offered by TCI must be con-
sidered part of the franchise fee. The Com-
mission reasoned that access payments fun-
nel ed through Miami Cable Access Corpora-
tion only benefit one group of special users
— access users. Unless access payments are
completely voluntary and benefit all users in-
cluding the cable operator, these payments
must be considered a part of the franchise fee,
the FCC said.
This relationship between access payments
and franchise fees was also one of the major
Dick Holcombe, a Vice President with ATC } speaks at a workshop on "The Future of Com-
munity Programming"
28 Community Television Review
fOMMUNITY PROGRAMMING
V %F( MANAGING THE HID DEM HE SOURCES
topics of discussion during the teleconference.
James McKinney, Chief of the FCCs Mass
Media Bureau, told NFLCP Convention par-
ticipants that he didn't 4 'see any bright rain-
bow on the horizon for local access where the
government is requiring it." McKinney in-
dicated that access payments offered by the
cable company during the competitive bidding
process will be taken out of the franchise fee
unless the 4 'offer is free and voluntary; that
is, there are no threats by the city government
— [i.e.] — 'if you don't offer it, you're not
going to get the franchise' or 'if you don't of-
fer it, you're not going to get your franchise
renewed:
4 'We do not see a distinction between the
RFP and the franchise. When you request a
waiver of 3 percent franchise fee limitation,
we don't concern ourselves with the difference
between the request for proposals and the fran-
chise agreement,"
Many convention participants believed this
reasoning ran contrary to the concept of corn-
petitivie bidding. Mary Sue Smoller, Assis-
tant to the City Manager from Miami, Florida,
argued that the Miami decision is unfair to
consumers. "We went through a long and ar-
duous competitive process to find a franchisee
that would best meet the need of our citizens.
A key element in selecting a particular cable
operator is its commitment to providing com-
munity prograrnming diversity. The franchisee
is expected to meet its commitments and cities
have an obligation to preserve lawful
agreements to the maximum extent possible."
New York University Professor George
Stoney suggested the FCC's approach is com-
pletely unfair to the losers in a competitive bid-
ding process. "[Let's imagine] I was an ap-
plicant for the franchise and based my applica-
tion on a realistic analysis of the market, rather
than all the malarky the company that won us-
ed. My bid was more conservative, and I lost
out. Now the winning company [with FCC ap-
proval] is rolling it al] back.
"Why shouldn't the city be able to start all
over and renegotiate will all of us? Don't I have
rights as well?"
Developing a New Consensus
In suggesting how community programmers
can respond to these threats, Steve Suitts stated
that the movement must find ways to develop
"a lasting political consensus for public ac-
cess." He suggested that the basis for a political
consensus that can maintain access is to build
alliances with organizations with broad con-
stituencies. 4 'In most places, especially in ur-
ban areas, when you begin to recognize the
full range of these groups — people of color,
ethnic groups, the poor, civil rights advocates,
civil libertarians, labor unionists, feminists,
the elderly, peace advocates, environmen-
talists, children, advocates for honest govern-
ment, alternative artists, the physically disabl-
ed — these numbers add up to a very substan-
tial and powerful group who are the natural
constituencies to maintain a political concen-
sus for public access and to build a substan-
tial, impressive audience for local programs"
A Sense of Optimism
In spite of the deep concern over the serious
attacks on community prograrnming, the con-
vention was not in a panic. Community pro-
grarnming has survived throughout the United
States in the worst of times, and there was an
unspoken feeling at the Convention that it
would continue to do so. Most participants
came to the Convention to concentrate on the
nuts and bolts of community programming and
they had plenty of opportunity to pursue their
purpose.
The 66 workshops focused on important
practical considerations that local program-
mers face on a daily basis. These workshops
were broken up into nine tracks: Access
Management, Local Origination and
Advertising, Local Government and Cable
Communications, Educators and
Librarians in Cable, Arts Organizations
and Arts Institutions, Labor and Indepen-
dent Producers, Advanced Issues, Cable
Policy, and Programming Showcase.
The emphasis in these workshops was not
so much on how to survive, but on how to
grow and improve community service. There
was a clear sense of optimism in Denver. After
all, community programming has made
historic gains in recent years and has already
become an important tradition in many areas
of the United States. Congress, the FCC and
the U.S. Supreme Court may slow the move-
ment down, but there is no doubt now that ac-
cess and local origination programming will
blossom for many years to come.
Paul DAri is Managing Editor of the Com-
munity Television Review,
7 i
NC.
633 South Federal Boulevard
Denver, Colorado 80219
1-800-525-9571
1-303-922-5564
Call us for friendly
pricing on systems
or on components,
WE
PROUDLY
REPRESENT:
3M
Panasonic
JVC
Community Television Review 29
Convention
Feedback
The National Convention in Denver
was a tremendous success this year, and
it would not have been possible without
the efforts of Professional Meeting
Management and many volunteers who
put in long hours. The national office
received numerous letters and phone calls
praising the quality of the Convention.
Herewith is a small sample:
D ear NFLCP:
your of-
s r ssfoj ^; i r o]vedon -e 0 ,
* ein g a new mmu
w >Kn the NFLCP f ^ m ° re a <*ve
hammers. ° f UcaJ C ab j e
Sincerely,
f^t. Scott
S P™g, Texas
Dear NFLCP:
I just returned from Denver and
wanted you to know that I had a great
time at the conference and was very
impressed by what I heard and those
I met. My compliments for all your
hard work.
Sincerely,
Susan Murphy
Educational Consultant
Rogers Cablesystems
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Dear NFLCP;
In all my years (and careers-
communiry organizing, law, teaching,
health planning) that was without a
doubt t he best conference lever at-
tended! Really!
Kind Regards,
Henry L. Freund
Office of Human Resources
City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii
Dear NFLCP".
and 1 want to congi«
job well done.
Sincerely,
Nanette Kainone
Office of the Preset
Borough of Brooklyn, NY
FALCON
CABLE TV
Congratulates
Our Staff Producers
Ron Hudson
Asian Cultural Festival
Narrowcast Category
&
Anna Marie Piersimoni
Vertical Interval
Arts & Cultural Expression
Category
1984
HOMETOWN USA
VIDEO FESTIVAL
WINNERS
30 Community Television Review
Cable Access As A Community Asset
By Steve Suitts
The following is an excerpted text of the
key-note address delivered at the NFL CP
National Convention by Steve Suitts, Ex-
ecutive Director of the Southern Regional
Council.
Public access on cable television, in my
judgment, is the most important techno-
logical advancement of the concept of free
speech in this century. The notion that
people are given without charge the op-
portunity to train and prepare, as they
wish, video programming which is distrib-
uted free throughout a cable system to
thousands of households has no parallel
in any other means of mass communica-
tions. Cable access provides in our society
today what the soap box on the town
square did in the America of small towns a
century ago.
Despite this unique central role for
cable access, the concept has seldom been
protected as a matter of law by the state or
federal courts. The First Amendment has
seldom been interpreted by the federal
courts as requiring cable access to exist in
any community or to be preserved when
threatened. In fact, court decisions in the
last few years suggest that the right of ac-
cess will be no more protected by the
courts in the future than it has been in the
past.
Without the protection of the First
Amendment by the courts, the concept of
cable access depends solely upon political
and economic decisions that are primarily
on the local and national levels. Unlike
the right of citizens to parade down main
street, the right of citizens to send video
programming downstream is only as good
as the political concensus and the eco-
nomic realities permit.
The Cycles of Poverty
This fact of life has come home to a
good number of communities in the last
several months as cable companies have
proposed to reduce substantially their
commitments of resources to local pro-
gramming. The good folks of Milwaukee,
Dallas, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and elsewhere
know this fact of life only too well.
The best moments for cable access are
its first moments. When franchising oc-
curs, public access is usually in its best
posture. Hard times for public access run
in cycles. Whenever the economy worsens
and interest rates are high, cable owners
begin to cut corners and usually begin by
proposing to reduce or eliminate local
programming. The reason they start there
is simple: cable owners view public access
and often local origination as major ex-
penses that generate little or no revenue.
The results are often equally as straight
forward: At some time or another, when
the political support for local program-
ming weakens, the economic needs of the
company causes a reduction in local
access.
These cycles are for public access the
cycles of poverty. With each cycle local
programming on cable is substantially in-
jured and is less able in the future to
realize its opportunities and promise to
the communities. Indeed, I cannot think
of a single example when an initial sub-
stantial commitment to public access was
reduced for economic reasons, but in bet-
ter economic conditions was restored to
its original commitment. Once it is lost, it
is lost for all time to come.
Because we are in the depths of another
cycle, and because most of the franchising
is over — most of the best moments for
public access— have passed. We must
search hard for better ways to protect the
concept and to improve upon the reality
of community programming on local ac-
cess channels, We must do so in ways that
we have hesitated to embrace in the past.
We must do so by making public access
and local programming as much of an
asset as an obligation of the community
and the cable company.
Developing Constituencies
I believe that we who use and operate
public access must become the evangelists
who enlist people to realize the great
promise and opportunities of local pro-
gramming in cable. And, I believe we
must find ways to hold a lasting political
concensus for public access and to answer
the economic arguments which threaten
its survival.
I know that almost every local access
operation provides some very good pro-
gramming and can provide an impressive
listing of organizations with which it has
worked. Yet, I also know that the pro-
gramming of public access today is carried
out largely without the genuine, continu-
ing and daily support and involvement of
community groups. We can no longer af-
ford to have the primary, ongoing in-
volvement of such groups only on occa-
sion or only on paper.
The organizations with constituencies
in your community are the essential basis
for a political concensus that can maintain
public access. Their political support,
however, will not come nor will it con-
tinue unless community organizations are
involved in a vital way from beginning to
end in public access . . . until these groups
become the real, frequent beneficiaries of
the electronic soap box.
I am not proposing that public access
centers compromise their fundamental
philosophy of first come, first serve. I am
proposing some affirmative action in the
allocation of your staff, time and re-
sources. When cable access operators
have enlisted — not just invited — commu-
nity groups into public access, you should
give them extra time for use of your equip-
ment and studio for production and edit-
ing simply because they are community
groups. Your staff should spend more
time with the representatives of these
groups than with unaffiliated individuals.
And, you should offer community groups
the opportunity to stay longer in the best
times of your program schedule, simply
because they are community groups,
I firmly believe that today it would be
better for an access operation to produce
fewer programs in order to make an extra
effort to engage six or seven members of
a community organization — an organiza-
tion with a real constituency— to become
a vital part of some program. If you in-
volve six people of an organization of five
thousand on a program that is of vital in-
terest or use to the community group, ac-
cess than has the start of real political con-
Community Television Review 31
stituency and a real potential audience.
And, you have a means to target publicity
about the program inexpensively through
the organization's own newsletter, tele-
phone bank, or meetings.
To preach the gospel, we need both to
tell people that there is a promised land
and to explain how they can get there and
the rewards of that final destination. We
must not only invite — we must enlist this
involvement.
In my judgement, the constituencies
and the community groups that you will
find most interested in the services of
cable access will be the poor, racial and
ethnic minorities, and others, who are
underrepresented segments of our popula-
tion in the traditional media. Because
their interests and needs are seldom re-
flected by mass media, local program-
ming on cable offers them the opportunity
to communicate and to learn.
In most places especially in urban areas,
when you begin to recognize the full range
of these groups — people of color, ethnic
groups, the poor, civil rights advocates,
civil libertarians, labor unionists, femin-
ists, the elderly, peace advocates, environ-
mentalists, children, advocates for honest
government, alternative artists, the physi-
cally disabled — these numbers add up to a
very substantial and powerful group who
are the natural constituencies to maintain
a political concensus for public access and
to build a substantial, impressive audience
for local programs.
While these groups are not always the
upscale audiences that advertisers and
broadcasters seek, they are a very realistic
and good audience for cable television.
These are the people who are looking
most often for different programming;
they are usually politically active; these
are the groups who are the most likely vol-
unteers for cable access. They have news-
letters, telephone banks and meetings
where programming can be promoted;
and many are members who have disposa-
ble income — evidenced by the fact that
they contribute $20-$40 each year to one
or more organizations.
When added together, these groups also
constitute remarkable impressive num-
bers as a potential audience. Each com-
munity may differ; but on a national
basis, when you add together the dues
paying members of organizations repre-
senting these groups, they constitute
something from 15 million to 25 million
people. Whether cable owners and opera-
tors are liberal or conservative, moderate
or radical, Republican or Democrat, these
are hard numbers which a good cable
company will not ignore because of its
need to develop and retain large numbers
of subscribers.
I also believe that we can and should
begin a national satellite service that re-
flects and involves the best of community
programming around the country and that
serves the broad constituencies who have
been underrepresented by mass media,
This program service could give national
exposure to the best of what is produced
amid the more than seven hundred hours
a week of original local programming on
cable across the country. It would also
begin to provide an outlet for those inde-
pendent producers who find that even
public broadcasting is uninterested in
their work.
Advocates of Cable Television
I believe that we must also embrace
another role. I believe that the advocates
for public access must also become the ad-
vocates for cable television.
It is a role which some independent pro-
ducers and city administrators of cable
have found most uncomfortable, if not
distasteful and repugnant, in the past, and
the cable industry has not helped us at
times take this view; nonetheless, I believe
we must take up the duty of promoting
the use and the primacy of cable television
as the best medium for expression and for
viewing in this country.
Today there are four mass means of
electronic communications:
• Broadcast signals;
• Direct broadcast satellite;
• Cable television;
• Video cassettes.
It is supremely important that cable
television be understood as the preferred
medium of mass communications and
that every legitimate advantage for success
be given to cable television even if it oc-
cassionally is to the detriment of one of
the other three means of communications.
While public access has no firm consti-
tutional pro lection as a part of cable tele-
vision, it does have a tradition and a size-
able presence which we must not lose.
Where else can we find a medium that
reaches today almost thirty- five million
households and where on one channel free
local programming is available to any citi-
zen? There is no parallel in mass commu-
nications today. On cable television speech
is largely free of censorship and free of
financial barriers. On the other hand,
broadcast stations have never set aside one
half a million dollars of equipment — not
even $200 worth of equipment — or three
hundred thousand dollars a year for oper-
ations in any community to permit citi-
zens to use and develop programming on
that station as they think it meets their
own needs and interests. By definition,
direct broadcast satellite programming
will have no local presence at all. And, if
trends continue, we may find in the future
that the local video store is not the all that
it appears on first blush.
Today, more than ten million house-
holds have video cassette players. By 1986
its possible that as many as one in four of
all television households will have a video
cassette player.
Although video cassette recorders offer
an unlimited freedom of choice for the
viewer (and does not rely upon traditional
means of distribution of programming),
their system of distribution offers no
means by which the tools of producing
programming will be made available to
members of the public. Video stores will
give ultimate freedom of choice for the
viewer but they will deny equal opportu-
nity to the producer.
In the structure of electronic communi-
cations in the future, cable television of-
fers the best opportunity for the principles
of public access to live. Thus, in the future
cable television must be given every rea-
sonable opportunity to succeed if public
access is to succeed.
Perhaps someday cable access for citi-
zens will gain constitutional protection.
While we must try to hasten the time, we
can not wait for that day. Across this
country we must recognize now the best
ways to establish the political concensus
and an economic base for cable access in
the future. We must also recognize who
are our best political constituents and our
most likely audiences for public access.
And we must enlist their participation.
Like the exercise of free speech itself,
cable access is an exercise in democracy
. . . exploring new ways of expression and
empowering all citizens by words, music,
images, and ideas. Yet, cable access
should not be a representative democratic
practice as much as a participatory de-
mocracy ... a practice where those who
need a voice are enlisted and assisted to
use their own . . . where those who need to
be heard are enlisted and assisted to speak
for themselves.
The future of access programming lies
in this challenge, and with the proper use
of your collective hands, minds, and
hearts, this challenge will be met.
Community Television Review
Making Telecommunications Ready For Democracy
By Diana Peck
This year Diana Peck received the
George Stoney Award at the NFLCP Na-
tional Convention, Ms. Peck has worked
hard for NFLCP as a dedicated advocate
of community programming. She was
Chair of the NFL CP Board of Directors
from July 1981 to July 1983. This is an ex-
cerpt from her acceptance speech.
I was reading recently in the New Eng-
land Journal of Medicine that a local
group of medical researchers in Atlanta's
Center for Disease Control had isolated a
new virus, governmentus ridiculitis, which
causes a virulent disease local to the
Washington, D.C. area. We know it more
commonly as deregulation fever. It is
known to afflict particularly actors from
California and no cure has yet been found.
Congress appears to have caught the
bug. The Senate has passed S. 66, a bill
whose purpose is to deregulate cable tele-
vision. The House, while less afflicted
with the fever, is working on H.R. 4103,
which proposes some deregulatory steps.
The Supreme Court has also caught the
bug. First there was the Boulder decision
which challenged the authority of local
governments to regulate cable. Then there
was the recent Oklahoma (Crisp) decision
which ruled that states do not have juris-
diction over a cable operator's content.
And finally, there is a hotbed of activity
for the incubation of deregulation fever at
the executive branch of the government,
represented by the FCC.
In Congress, in the Supreme Court, and
at the FCC, we see a pattern of deregula-
tion, in particular a pattern of removing
regulatory authority from the state and
local levels and placing it on the federal
level, where deregulation can proceed.
And to justify this deregulation, they
argue simplistically that the new television
technologies supply us with more channels
and that more channels automatically
mean more diversity. More channels does
not mean diversity if the same program-
ming suppliers monopolize all delivery
systems.
Many access programmers are aware of
the old analogy that access channels are
really the electronic parkland of the USA,
The territory of American television has
(except for public television) been carved
up into privately owned land. The people
who got small lots have, for the most part,
sold out to the bigger landowners, so that
the media conglomerates now own huge
tracts of this territory. In the late 1940s
and early 1950s, when the FCC was giving
away the land, they set some aside for the
public in the form of public television.
But even that land is not accessible to the
public anymore as users. Only the access
channels provide a place where people can
use— not just look at— this great public
resource. With deregulation, the land-
owners are likely to get more powerful,
while the small enclaves of parkland —
that's us— struggle to maintain themselves.
How many people realize that the Equal
Time Rule and the Fairness Doctrine are
on the verge of being eliminated? How
many people understand the implications?
How many people understand the impor-
tance of having access channels and local-
ism in programming? How many people
understand how fragile local program-
ming is? We know that the answer is NOT
MANY. I suspect that we in this room
represent about ten percent of all the peo-
ple in the country who really understand
these issues. Telecommunication issues
are not only new, they are extremely com-
plex. But we have not done our job of in-
forming the American public about their
importance.
What disturbs me so greatly is not so
much that deregulation is going on, but
rather that it is going on SO QUIETLY.
When James Watt gave away mineral
rights in wilderness areas, millions of en-
vironmentalists all over the country were
outraged and Washington heard about it!
If Mark Fowler gives away the Fairness
Doctrine, Washington will probably hear
from a handful of public interest advo-
cates, such as the United Church of Christ,
the Media Access Project, and .the Tele-
communications Research and Action
Center and maybe a few interested indi-
viduals. If we lose our access to deregula-
tion, will Washington hear a great hue
and cry from the American public? Of
course not. And yet when an access chan-
nel is taken away from the public, it is no
different than when the public loses any
other publicly owned resource.
But how do we tell people what they are
losing? How do we assign a value to an ac-
cess channel? Is it like losing ten acres of
land? Or ten thousand acres of land? Or
ten million acres of land? We cannot mea-
sure access by walking off its boundaries
the way we can measure land. We can't
even measure the use of access channels
the way we measure the use of parkland
because the majority of those who benefit
from access are the audience. And most of
all, we cannot measure the impact of the
loss of access for future generations.
When parkland is destroyed by strip min-
ing or condominiums, we see what our
children and grandchildren won't have. If
access disappears, there will simply be one
more channel of national programming to
fill in the space.
We know that without access, we will
not have a communication democracy.
We will have an autocracy ruled by the
media corporations. We, therefore, must
be the preservers of that democracy. We
must be the Continental Army of the revo-
lution of the communication democracy.
We must continue our work showing peo-
ple what it means to have democracy — the
voice of the people — on television. We are
the ones who have to file comments with
the FCC on their proposed weakening of
the Fairness Doctrine. We are the ones
who have to educate our Congressmen
about the impact of the pending cable
legislation and support those members of
the House who are holding the line against
deregulation. We are the ones who have to
write letters to the editors of our news-
papers when the Supreme Court rules in
favor of more rights for broadcasters.
And we are the ones who have to stop
Senator Packwood's drive to guarantee
full First Amendment freedoms for broad-
casters at the expense of the First Amend-
ment freedoms of the American public.
If we don't do it, no one else will.
Community Television Review 33
NFLCP Awards Night
The NFLCP awards banquet in Denver was
held before a live audience of over 600 peo-
ple. The event was also cablecast live
throughout the Denver area. The "George
Stoney Award" the "Community Com-
munications Award" the "NFLCP" Best
Region Award," and the "Hometown USA
Video Festival" awards were all presented.
The annual "George Stoney Award for
Humanistic Communications" was awarded to
Diana Peck (See speech on page 52). Ms. Peck
was recognized for making an outstanding con-
tribution to community programming with her
dedicated leadership of NFLCP while she was
Chair of the NFLCP Board of Directors (July
1981 through July 1983).
The "Community Communications Award"
went to Marin Community Video in San
Rafael, California. This access facility has
been operating for over ten years and is an im-
portant model of public access at its best.
There was a tie in the voting for the "Best
Region Award." Therefore, it went to both the
Midwest and Central States regions. These two
regions were recognized for their growth in
memberships, their regional activities, and
support to the national office.
In addition there were 50 awards given to
participants in the "Hometown USA Festival."
The number of entries this year was 667 (from
187 cities in 33 states). The following is a list
of the award winners:
Hometown USA Winners
DOCUMENTARY PROFILE
Volunteer Single
1) Jerry Murphy
"Andrew Wolf: Variations"
Newton, MA
Staff Single
2) Jim Arnold
"The First 100 Years"
Pleasant Hill, CA
DOCUMENTARY PUBLIC AWARENESS
Volunteer Single
3) Jamaica Plains Newsreel
"Farnyard Wharf
San Francisco, CA
Staff Single
4) Dorothy Fadiman
"World Peace is a Local Issue"
San Francisco, CA
DOCUMENTARY EVENT
Volunteer Series
5) Caryn Rogoff
"Black History Month"
New York, NY
LOCAL NEWS/MAGAZINE
Volunteer Single
6) Barbara Dickson
"Retirement"
Dallas, TX
Staff Single
7) Dorothy Randoll
"Community Showcase"
Dallas, TX
Volunteer Series
8) Stan Everett
"Princeton Newsweek"
Cincinnati, OH
Staff Series
9) Group W. Cable
"Uptown Local: El Barrio"
New York, NY
COMPILATION
Volunteer
10) Viacom Cablevision
"Compilation"
Mountain View, CA
Staff
11) Cable Dekalb
"Compilation"
Decatur, GA
NARROWCAST
Volunteer Single
12) Lila Gold worm
"A Golden Mosaic"
York, PA
Staff Single
13) Ron Hudson
"Asian Cultural"
Alhambra, CA
INSTRUCTIONAL TRAINING
Volunteer Single
14) Sharon Brousseau
"TRS Training Tape"
Boulder, CO
Staff Single
15) Jabari Simama
"Production Tips Sampler' 9
Atlanta, GA
Volunteer Series
16) Loraine Chambers McCarty
"Composition in a Portrait"
Birmington, MI
Staff Series
17) JeffLifton
"Children in Action"
Baltimore, MD
SPORTS
Volunteer Single
18) Claudia Chotzen
"Honolulu Wheelchair"
Honolulu, HI
Staff Single
19) Group W Cable
"Manhattan Gold"
New York, NY
Staff Series
20) Starrs & Doherty
"Sports Wrap-Up"
Decatur, GA
VIDEO ART
Volunteer Single
21) Ken Bechman
"South of LaHonda"
New York, NY
Volunteer Series
22) Terry N. Terry
"A Taste of the Electric Way"
East Lansing, MI
LIVE PROGRAMMING
Staff Single
23) Nadine Messina
"Live Election Night"
Griffith, IN
34 Community Television Review
COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING
\jL f( MANAGING T HE HIDDE N HESQ[]RCE 5_ )\M\
Volunteer Series
24) Bryan Brooke
' 4 You 're the Parent: Teenage
Sexuality"
Littleton, CO
Staff Series
25) Lori Cohen
4 'Your Opinion Please"
Quincy, MA
ENTERTIANMENT
Volunteer Single
26) James Bond, Dick Richards, Potsy
Duncan
"The American Music Show"
Atlanta, GA
27) John Kitchener
"Portraits"
Newbury, MA
Volunteer Series
28) Doug Wylie
"Uncle Ducky Show"
Fort Wayne, IN
Staff Single
29) Viacom 30
"Martin Sight"
San Rafael, CA
Staff Series
Jaimie Davidovich
"The Live Show"
New York, NY
ARTS & CULTURAL EXPRESSION
Volunteer Single
31) Larry Evans
"A Glimpse of Mill Hunk Culture"
Pittsburgh, PA
Staff Single
32) Laina Long
"Summer Solstice Celebration '83"
Santa Barbara, CA
Volunteer Series
33) Freeman & Maureen Crocker
"Street Poets''
Thornton, CO
Staff Series
34) Ann Marie Piersimoni
"Vertical Interval"
Alhambra, CA
PROGRAMMING BY CHILDREN
Volunteer Single
35) Susan Murphy
"A Pool of Hockney"
Eden Prairie, MN
Staff Single
36) Jonathan Anderson
"A Living Genealogy"
Torrington, CT
Volunteer Series
37) Nancy & Michael Douglas
"Teenstuff"
Stamford, CT
Staff Series
38) Syracuse/ Upstate New Channels
"Kid Stuff*
Syracuse, NY
INTERACTIVE
Staff Single
39) Mark Saltveit
"A Man of the People"
Portland, OR
Volunteer Series
40) Eugene Shirk
"National Issues Forum"
Reading, PA
Staff Series
41) Susan Kerr
"Dallas Interacts"
Garland, TX
INSTITUTIONAL NETWORK
Staff Single
42) Michael Gitter
"Tour de Fort '83"
Fort Collins, CO
HONORABLE MENTIONS
DOCUMENTARY PUBLIC AWARENESS
Staff Single
1) Group W Cable
"SRO"
New York, NY
LOCAL NEWS/MAGAZINE
Staff Series
2) Debbie Marciniak
"Generations No. 13"
Baltimore, MD
ARTS & CULTURAL EXPRESSION
Volunteer Single
3) David Garrigus
"Brothers"
Carrollton, TX
Volunteer Series
4) Louisa S. Bonnie
"Eat at Arts"
Cleveland, OH
ENTERTAINMENT
Staff Series
5) Maria Holmes
"It's A Woman's World"
Canton, ME
PROGRAMMING BY CHILDREN
Volunteer Series
6) Youth Vision, Inc.
"Youth Vision Series"
Providence, RI
Volunteer Single
Beverly Foley
"A New Kid at School"
Randolph, MA
INSTITUTIONAL NETWORK
Staff Single
8) Kim Krone nberg
"Health Line East"
Boston, MA
Community Television Review 35
The Convention Exhibitors
"Community Programming; Managing
the Hidden Resources/' marked the first
NFLCP Convention that featured exhibi-
tors. Convention participants visited these
exhibits with great interest throughout the
three-day session. The following compa-
nies were exhibitors on the floor.
Warren Anderson
Phillips Television Systems
900 Corporate Drive
Mahwah, NJ 07430
(201) 529-1550
Dale Anderson
Davis Audio Visual, Inc.
1801 Federal Blvd.
Denver, CO 80204
(303) 455-1122
Lawrence Brinton
Video Teknix
633 South Federal
Denver, Co 80219
(303) 922-5564
Mike Albi
CEAVCO Audio-Visual
1650 Webster Street
Denver, CO 80215
(303) 238-6493
Jane Swearingen
Film/Video Equipment Service
1875 Pearl Street
Denver, CO 80210
(303) 778-8616
Fred Gerling
Jimmy Rea Electronics
540 West Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 221-5170
Jeff Stanfield
Burst Communications, Inc.
7310 South Alton Way #C
Engiewood, CO
(303) 733-8045
Darryl Keeler
Fortel Inc.
2985 Gateway Drive
Norcross, GA 30071
(404) 449-4343
Joseph E. Elliott
Films Inc.
773 Green Bay Road
Wilmette, IL 60091
(312) 256-4025
Bal Patterson
On Camera
2435 Topaz Drive
Boulder, CO 80302
(303) 443-8215
David B. Marr
JVC
7912 S. Vincennes Way
Engiewood, CO 80112
(303) 796-8833
David Burt
New Visions
P.O. Box 599
Aspen, CO 81612
(303) 925-2640
Todd J. Schieffert
ADC Magnetic Controls Company
6000 S. Ulster, Suite 201
Denver, CO 801 1 1
(303) 850-7016
James Pierce
National Federation of State
Humanities Councils
1836 Blake
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 292-4458
Kirk Basefsky
Ampex Corp.
Magnetic Tape Division
6615 S. Field Street
Littleton, CO 80123
(303) 979-3959
Tom Wood
Texscan, Inc.
8058 S. Trenton Court
Engiewood, CO 80112
(303) 694-9228
Jay S. Gierkey
Grass Roots Television
4200 Bluff Lane
Sugar Loaf Mountain
Cedar, MI 49621
(616) 228-5015
Convention participants gather in the exhibition hall.
36 Community Television Review
How Local Programming Made the Cut at
NCTA'S 1984 Convention
By Adam Haas
While attending this year's National
Cable Television Association Convention,
I was curious to find out what prospects
lay ahead for local cable programming.
These trade shows create an uncanny
microcosim of the cable industry as a
whole, reflecting its values and directions.
At the last NCTA convention I attended
in 1982, theie seemed to be quite an inter-
est and focus on local origination and
public access programming. Have things
changed since 1982? Where are the indus-
try's current priorities? I found a mixed
bag for local programming with some
good news and some bad.
The convention exhibit hall provided a
number of answers. Companies with
booths at the convention run the gambit
of the industry. Virtually every ingredient
in the cable TV business was represented
on the convention floor.
In 1982, there were all kinds of new
companies being formed and announced
at NCTA. The exhibit floor was jammed
with new enterprises hocking their ser-
vices. However, by 1984 many of these
companies either never got off the ground
or found cable* s blue sky too overcast to
meet financial forecasts. With sixty- five
fewer booths, this year's exhibit hall
reflected the current financial crisis within
the industry.
Those companies exhibiting at NCTA
this year were there to do bottom-line
business, and no longer had the promo-
tions budget to lure conventioneers to
their booths with expensive give-a-ways.
In contrast to 1982's free t-shirts, towels,
tote bags, etc., this year's convention of-
fered apples, granola, and beef jerky.
Fewer Equipment Vendors
What concerned me most about the
1984 exhibit hall was the lack of equip-
ment vendors targeted for L.O. and access
application. In 1982, the hall boasted
some nine exhibits designed specifically
for the access and L.O. production mar-
ket. There were numerous mobile vans on
display, editing systems, cameras, charac-
ter generators, switchers, etc. This year, I
counted only four major video production
vendors.
I asked the video vendors on the floor
why they thought there was such a dearth
of video production exhibits, and why
they decided to attend. Bob Wickland,
Manager Customer Service for Micro-
time, Inc., said that the NCTA show has
become much more software oriented. As
a result, the technical types aren't attend-
ing NCTA anymore. Instead, they are go-
ing to the NAB Convention. Since those
purchasing equipment do not attend
NCTA, the amount of actual business is
very slim. Wickland identified the biggest
impediment to participate in the NCTA
convention: < 'These shows are expensive
and unless you write a lot of orders, the
booth won't pay for itself." However,
Wickland felt it was worthwhile to attend
the show, both to make personal contacts
and to find out the needs of the cable
market.
Judging by booth sizes of some of the
vendors, the commitment of certain com-
panies to the local programming market is
minimal. Sony Corporation is one such
company. Instead of an elaborate set up
as in the past, they had a small corner
booth this year in which they were show-
ing a new titler and graphics computer.
There wasn't a camera or any ENG equip-
ment to be seen. The Sony representative
watching over the booth seemed to resent
the fact that he was assigned to the show.
However, the JVC booth conveyed an
entirely different message. It was a large
display which showed off new cameras,
VCR's, 3 A " and Vi " editing systems, and
an ingenius recam. The feeling there was
very upbeat. Logan Enright, one of the
JVC reps, at the booth, explained it this
way: "Our products best meet the needs
of cablecasters dollar for dollar. Others
have products that are too expensive. We,
on the other hand, enjoy a lot of success
in cable."
Both in terms of cost and simplicity, it's
clear that JVC has gone after the commu-
nity programming market and captured a
significant portion of it.
Encouragement From
Software Vendors
Although the hardware commitment to
local programming was unimpressive at
the convention, the software end was
more encouraging. With all major pro-
gram suppliers represented on the exhibit
floor, it is easy to target those with strong-
est interest in community programming.
Neither ESPN or USA networks showed
as much appreciation of local program-
ming. This can be explained by their
100% commercial broadcast orientation.
The program director at ESPN said their
service covered most sporting events with
its own crew and equipment. They are
occasionally interested in outside sports
coverage, but the quality must be top-
notch. A programmer at USA explained
that their service, originally a sports net ex-
clusively, is expanding its format to reach
a larger share of the non- sports audience.
But because it relies mostly on advertising
dollars, USA is only interested in pro-
grams of mass appeal and not of the genre
typically developed by community pro-
grammers.
Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin of Lifetime
had some mildly encouraging words.
First, she explained most cable networks
have come to realize that producing their
own original programming is too costly.
As such, Lifetime and others are doing
less and less production. As a result, ac-
quisitions from independent producers
are increasing. Dwyer-Dobbin said that
initially, independents were asking exorbi-
tant licensing fees. Now with the under-
standing that cable is no longer a boom in-
dustry, independents are expecting less.
When asked whether Lifetime is soliciting
programming, Dwyer-Dobbin explained
that they're interested in looking at pilots.
Lenda Washington of The Learning
Channel put it bluntly: "We simply don't
have the money to produce our own pro-
gramming." The result is a satellite service
completely comprised of acquired prod-
ucts. The Learning Channel offers numer-
ous "how to" educational series. Their
programming style tends to be less slick
and more thoughtful than other satellite
Community Television Review 37
networks, A well produced L.O. or access
series might have a place on The Learning
Channel. The service has already set an in-
dustry wide precedent by becoming the
first satellite network to solicit and screen
the work of independent film and video
producers.
Clearly the most encouraging news
came from Curtis Davis, Vice-President
of Programming for Arts and Entertain-
ment (A & E). A & E is another service
which relies entirely on acquisition. Until
now their acquisitions have come from
conventional sources— the BBC, syndica-
tors, etc. But Davis has developed an in-
triguing concept for what he terms "Pro-
ducing Consortia," which rely on local
cable programmers as a key party, A pro-
ducing consortium is made up of four en-
tities and is formed as follows: a local
cable production entity identifies a local
art event which is of a caliber deserving
national attention, The producers contact
A & E to determine interest. If Mr. Davis
thinks the project has merit, the two other
entities must then be identified: one, a
local non-profit arts organization, and
two, a local corporation or business to
serve as sponsor using the project both as
a tax write-off (with the arts organization
serving as a pass through) and as a vehicle
for national exposure on A & E. It's an
exciting concept which could be a boon to
all four members of the consortium.
An Absence of Community
Programming Workshops
Besides the exhibit hall, the NCTA
convention workshop sessions provide
another glimpse of the industry's priori-
ties. In 1982, two convention workshops
were devoted to community program-
ming. This year, there were none.
Was the NCTA, the conference orga-
nizer, sending a message to community
programmers — that local programming is
simply not important to the cable indus-
try?
This was not at all the intention, ac-
cording to Char Beals, Vice-President of
Programming and Marketing for NCTA.
"We wanted to give local programming a
profile at the convention but were unsuc-
cessful due to lack of interest," said
Beales. Conference organizers planned to
host a panel entitled Making L.O. Viable
Economically, but prospective speakers
approached by Beals all declined the in-
vitation. "MSO's were much tighter this
year in their allocation of who came.
Local programmers, who had attended in
previous years, weren't allowed to this
year." "(The cable industry) is in a transi-
tional period," says Beals. "Local pro-
gramming has to give something tangible
back to the system, both in the commer-
cial and marketing areas. Once this hap-
pens, than you'll see more of an emphasis
on local program production,"
But Beals is optimistic about the future.
A greater emphasis on both L.O, and na-
tional programming is planned for next
year's convention.
The 1984 NCTA Convention's minimal
emphasis on local programming should
concern community programmers. Com-
munity programming will not survive
without industry support and recognition.
The NCTA Convention should provide an
opportunity to showcase local program-
ming successes. Our presence should be
felt in the exhibit hall and particularly, the
workshop sessions.
The low profile of community program-
ming at the NCTA Convention under-
scores two pressing needs. First, we
should offer our assistance to NCTA in
designing next year's convention so that a
broader exposure of community program-
ming is insured. Second, and most impor-
tantly, we should work more closely with
cable companies to demonstrate in a con-
crete fashion the value of community pro-
gramming for the cable operator. Once
community programming is recognized
for its bottom-line benefit to MSO's, it
will no longer be a second class citizen at
the annual trade show. Once it becomes
an industry priority, local programming
will be a highlight at future NCTA con-
ventions.
Adam Haas is the Regional Director of
Programming for Rogers Cablesystems of
Portland, He has been an active member
of the Federation since 1979, and served
as Vice-Chairman for NFL CP Board of
Directors in 1983.
CONGRATULATIONS
to the winners
of the Hometown
USA Video Festival
Boston Community Access
and Programming Foundation
Cablevision of Connecticut
HIICABLEMSION
38 Community Television Review
THE COMMUNITY VIDEOT:
A Resource of Technical Tips
By Dave Bloch
This column will follow a different for-
mat from the usual question-and-answer
one. Your "Videot" author moderated a
Convention workshop on technical tips
with experts Bill Makely of Albuquerque
and Ed Fiddler from Massachusetts. The
panelists and audience shared great ideas
with one another. Some of those ideas are
described below.
Inexpensive Set Materials:
A company called "On Camera' ■ exhib-
ited a package of modular set pieces at the
convention aimed at users with small
budgets. Call them in Boulder, Colorado
at (303) 443-8215.
As an alternative to the blue-curtain-
and-potted-palm background so overused
in access (and broadcast!) interview
shows j try using stepladders in different
positions. Place small plants and
paraphernalia on the rungs, run boards
between them to hang posters or pictures,
or shine lights through them to form in-
teresting shadows on the backdrop. The
ladders provide many three-dimensional
opportunities to the imaginative pro-
ducer.
Inexpensive Graphics:
To make slides of text, symbols or logos
for keying over video, buy some 35mm
"Kodalith" graphic arts film. This
material is very easy and fast to shoot and
process, and yields extremely sharp and
contrasty white-on-black slides from a
black -on- white original. You can even
color the clear area of the slide with over-
head transparency markers! A full-line
camera store should be able to help you
select the film and processing chemicals
you need.
Audio Cables:
If you are tired of never having the right
connector at the end of the cable to fit the
equipment, standardize on 3 -prong XLR
connectors for all your cables. Then,
make up short (12- to 18-inch) cables to
adapt the XLR's to everything else you
use (RCA phono, phone, mini-phone,
even spade lugs for screw terminals).
When you wind up audio cables, alter-
nate winding the cable on opposite sides
of the loop. When the cable is unravelled,
there will be no twists in it.
Scrounging:
Watch for television and radio stations
moving to new quarters! They may allow
you to strip their old studios of any old
stuff left behind. Old amplifiers, speak-
ers, lighting instruments, and grip pipe
can be pressed into service when you need
it.
The Tool Kit:
Your basic video tool kit should include
at least the following: soldering iron,
solder (wrap six inches around the power
cord and you'll never be without it!), volt-
ohmmeter, screwdrivers (Phillips, flat and
jeweller's), nutdrivers (at least a l A ", but a
whole set is better), needlenose and slip-
joint pliers, 6" adjustable wrench, Allen
wrench set, folding knife, electrical tape,
ductape (or gaffer's tape), crimper for
F-connectors, and wire stripper.
Dave Bloch is Manager of Local Program-
ming/or the Davis Community Cable Co-
operative in Davis, California,
Congratulations to all 1984 Hometown USA Festival winners for
their outstanding contributions to community programming.
A Special Salute to Our Community Programming Staffs in Cleve-
land, OH, San Francisco, CA, Marin, CA, and Mountain View, CA.
„ ^iacom
Cablevision
MORE OF WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR
Community Television Review 39
Whose First Amendment Is It, Anyway?
By Michael Meyerson
The battle over the First Amendment
and cable television rages in the courts, in
Congress, and in state houses and city
councils. The issue of the First Amend-
ment status of cable television is not just
an academic exercise or semantic quibble.
Rather, the rights and responsibilities of
government (at the federal, state and local
level) concerning such diverse issues as
public and leased access, exclusive fran-
chises and rate regulation will be deter-
mined in a large measure by the resolution
of this question.
When a novel legal issue such as this
arises, the first response of the lawyer,
trained in history and precedent, is to find
an analogy. The lawyer looks for some-
thing with the twin virtues of being similar
and already discussed by the courts.
Thus, the cable industry has argued that
the cable television operator is just like a
newspaper publisher, while those who
favor regulation, such as the National
League of Cities, contend that cable is just
like broadcast television. If either analogy
were accepted, the legal result would be,
not surprisingly, just what its proponent
desires.
If the cable operator is viewed as a "tele-
publisher,'* then the government could do
nothing to the cable operator which it
could not do to a newspaper publisher.
That would mean virtually no regulation
of any kind: no access requirements, no
must-carry rules, no rate regulation, and
no licensing apart from telling each cable
company what would be a convenient day
for them to dig up a particular city street.
If, on the other hand, the broadcast
model is used, then all the regulations
which can be imposed on broadcasters can
be imposed on the cable operator. Rules
governing access and licensing, along with
heavy government involvement, would
therefore be permissible.
The advantage to arguing by analogy is
that it makes the ultimate resolution of
the difficult legal question quite simple,
once you have found the right analogy.
The problem is that sometimes arguing by
analogy is circuitous, simplistic and just
plain silly.
For example, cable television is ob-
viously vastly different from newspapers
(imagine the practical difficulties of lining
your bird cage with a 450 megahertz co-
axial cable). Most importantly, where
there has been a historic "wall of separa-
tion" between newspapers and the gov-
ernment, the cable television operator and
the government have always been, and
continue to be, deeply entwined. The local
government gives the cable operator the
right to dig up the public streets and use
limited utility pole space. The local gov-
ernment protects the cable operator from
competing cable companies, since the
franchise is either a contractual or a de
facto monopoly. Finally, the federal gov-
ernment helps the cable operator by fixing
the rates the operator must pay for use of
utility poles and broadcast programs.
The other crucial difference between
cable and newspapers concerns the eco-
nomics of the two forms of communica-
tion. While it is extraordinarily expensive
to operate either a cable system or a news-
paper in a large city, it is not uncommon
to have two or more newspapers compet-
ing in the same town. (With the advent of
USA Today, most newspaper consumers
have a choice.) By contrast, more than
99% of the cable systems do not face com-
petition from another cable system for the
same subscribers.
Also, if a writer wishes to bypass the
newspaper, there are still numerous other
means for his or her words to be spread.
From magazines to weekly newspapers,
from monthly journals to the occasional
pamphlet, writers can communicate with
the public.
The analogy of cable to broadcast tele-
vision is not much stronger. While, in one
sense, cable and broadcast television pro-
grams "look alike," there are significant
differences as well. First, the broadcaster
has only one channel to program; the cable
operator has 24, 36, 54 or more. Second,
broadcasting is a "federal case"— only the
federal government can regulate broad-
casting. Because of its use of streets and
public rights-of-way, cable is involved with
local, as well as the national go vera menu
So, if neither analogy holds water, how
does the issue of the First Amendment
and cable television get resolved? The
solution is to use the principles behind the
regulation of newspaper and broadcast
television (as well as that other conduit of
communication, the telephone system) to
evaluate each proposed regulation.
Let's use public access as an example.
Public access serves many important First
Amendment functions without the danger
of government censorship. The Supreme
Court has stated that the First Amend-
ment, "rests on the assumption that the
widest possible dissemination of informa-
tion from diverse and antagonistic sources
is essential to the welfare of the public."
Access, which permits all individuals and
institutions in a community to communi-
cate electronically with the rest of the
community, provides for a truly diverse
public forum.
The First Amendment also protects the
individual's right of free expression and
the cable television viewer's right to
receive information. Both of these goals
are furthered by public access.
Public access also has the advantage of
not violating the paramount obligation of
the government to remain neutral in the
marketplace of ideas. Non-discriminatory,
first-come, first-served access does not
allow the government to help those view-
points with which it. agrees, nor penalize
those opinions it opposes. Unlike even the
Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters, which
requires the government to judge the con-
tent of a television program to determine
if an opposing speaker should be permit-
ted to reply, public access does not require
the government to police the content of
anyone's speech.
The application of the First Amend-
ment to different proposed regulations of
cable television will not always be easy. It
would well serve all who deal with these
issues to remember the words of Supreme
Court Justice Byron White: "It is the pur-
pose of the First Amendment to preserve
an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in
which the truth will ultimately prevail,
rather than to countenance monopoliza-
tion of that market, whether it be by the
government itself or a private licensee."
Michael Meyerson is a Professor of Law
at Brooklyn Law School.
40 Community Television Review
First of Two Parts
Rethinking Public Access
By Brian Kahin
On February 15, 1984, with negotiations
on cable deregulation again underway be-
tween the cities and the cable industry,
House Telecommunications Subcommit-
tee Chairman Timothy Wirth sent a letter
to his colleagues on the Energy and Com-
merce Committee outlining a national
plan for funding "noncommercial access
programming."
The plan was based on the tentative
agreement that 5% of gross cable system
revenues would be an acceptable franchise
fee under H.R. 4103. Wirth proposed that
this 5% be structured as follows: The
nominal franchise fee would be 4%, one-
fourth of which (1% of system gross)
would go to fund local access develop-
ment and production. On top of the 4%,
another 1% of the gross would go to "a
national fund or funds for the production
and development of noncommerical access
programming of national and regional in-
terest, for distribution to city, public and
educational access channels free or at a
minimal charge."
What would this programming look
like? The same paragraph goes on to say:
"Only a national pooling of funds will
allow for the development of expensive,
high quality programming of interest to
many communities, such as a show like
'Sesame Street.' "
Sesame Street certainly does not look or
feel like access programming. It is a multi-
million dollar product of the Children's
Television Workshop and the public tele-
vision system, which, whatever its virtues,
does not readily provide access for outsid-
ers. Indeed, "quality" serves it as both
banner and shield. The 1% for a national
fund looks very much like the 1%-of-gross
spectrum fee that Wirth had wanted as the
price for television deregulation, which
would have been used to fund public tele-
vision.
A close reading of the letter suggests
that Wirth *s primary interest is not access
but diversity — a value that is even harder
to define or measure. "Diversity," like
"quality," is a public television buzz-
word, but there is no monopoly at this
level of generality. The three networks
talk "quality," and they argue that they
provide enough "diversity" to satisfy
most of the American public. "Quality"
is conventionally measured by the size of
the production budget, but "diversity" is
hard to pin down. And certainly public
access programming provides a kind of di-
versity found nowhere else on television.
The 1984 Democratic Party platform
includes a plank on telecommunications
introduced by Wirth. It reads, in pertinent
part:
"This electronic marketplace is so
fundamental to our future as a democracy
(as well as to our economy) that social and
cultural principles must be as much a part
of communications policy as a commit-
ment to efficiency, innovation, and com-
petition. The principles are diversity, the
availability of a wide choice of informa-
tion services and sources; access, the ability
of all Americans, not just a privileged few,
to take advantage of this growing array of
information services and sources; and op-
portunity, particularly by minorities and
women, that will give every American the
ability to take advantage of the computer
and telecommunications revolution."
"Access," in these terms, sounds like
access to information as in the public
library model, "Opportunity" here
sounds more like access to media distribu-
tion systems, the kind of access prescribed
by the fairness doctrine and other broad-
casting regulations, than the kind associ-
ated with access channels on cable.
The problem is, access means many
things, depending on whether the access
constituency is the viewing public, the
producing public, or both.
As an institution, public access has
evolved on three main principles:
1 . Freedom of Expression: Access en-
sures that diverse ideas can be heard and
seen on the dominant medium of our time.
2. Community Service: Access serves
local needs by increasing and enhancing
communication at the local level.
3. Media Literacy: Access enables indi-
viduals and small organizations to learn to
use the medium of television. (As a pre-
requisite to community service or self-
expression — or as a first step in a televi-
sion career.)
The audience is the direct beneficiary of
the community service principle, whereas
the producer is the direct beneficiary in
the other cases. Ultimately, the benefits go
both ways — e.g., freedom of expression
offers new ideas to the community — but
not in perfect symmetry. Certainly, local
programmers are likely to be well inform-
ed of community needs, but should they
necessarily be limited to locally produced
programming? That might be a bad case
of reinventing the wheel. Why not use a
well-produced (perhaps professionally
produced) public service program, the
cost of which can be spread over many
communities, perhaps the whole country?
This, of course, is the reasoning behind
Wirth's national programming fund.
Wirth's proposal did not generate much
interest. The cities were not interested be-
cause it would leave them with 3% rather
than 5% of the system gross. It had no
natural constituency; it called for a new
institution at the national level that would
radically affect the practice of community
programming and implicitly challenge the
role of public television. Nonetheless, it
raises fundamental questions about the
future of access.
Cable access began well before satellite
delivery became commonplace. In 1972,
the FCC mandated a single public access
channel on high-capacity systems along
with single educational and government
access channels. In 1979 the Supreme
Court (in Midwest Video II) held that
these requirements were beyond the statu-
tory jurisdiction of the FCC. Local au-
thorities, no longer preempted by federal
rule, were then free to demand multiple
public access channels in franchising
RFPs. Access grew hydraheaded as spec-
trum was stockpiled in the public interest.
Complex hybrids were created — like the
Boston Community Access and Program-
ming Foundation, which looked like a
new kind of public television.
Furthermore, under the 1972 rules ac-
cess production was unsubsidized, except
for five minutes of live studio time. Pro-
duction equipment had to be made avail-
able, but it was to be rented at reasonable
cost. New franchises have required not
Community Television Review 41
only free use of equipment, but also train-
ing and, finally, discretionary funds.
Wirth proposed to take the discretion-
ary funding national, to fund in due
course as much as $300 million/yr. in new
productions, twice the national program-
ming budget of public television.
But what is national access program-
ming? Is it Sesame Street cast into the
public domain, to be played and replayed,
perhaps on videodisc — over the air, over
cable, and in suitably equipped preschools?
Is it information programming with all
rights cleared, libraried for use at the re-
quest of community organizations? Or
program material from national organiza-
tions to be used and reused by local chap-
ters or affiliates?
There are needs and opportunities here
that could be met by access — at least more
likely by access than by public television.
But access may already be so established
as a local institution that it will not readily
adapt to a larger scale of operation. The
great gap between access and public tele-
vision may never be filled, or it may be
filled by another institution, such as the
Learning Channel, or something entirely
new and ad hoc, such as Wirth' s fund.
What are the dimensions of this gap?
First, of course, nearly all public access
programming is locally produced. It varies
from station to station, but generally local
production accounts for only a few per-
centage points of public television pro-
gramming.
That is symptomatic of deep differ-
ences. The public television professional-
ism has relegated volunteers to minor
fundraising roles. The economics of pro-
duction are similar to commercial tele-
vision: labor costs make local productions
uneconomic, and only high-visibility na-
tional programming generates broad view-
er support. Access producers supply their
own labor and are generally responsible
for building their own audiences.
Generally, access production is charac-
terized by low direct costs— labor, publici-
ty, and supplies (tape is inexpensive and
reusable). The cost of the channel, espe-
cially in unfilled high -capacity systems, is
also very low compared with the broad-
cast transmission plant and the commer-
cial value of broadcast spectrum. (The
collective annual budget of the public
television system is some $850 million, not
including the value of the spectrum; out
of this total PBS national programming
accounts for less than $150 million.)
At present, very few community pro-
grammers have any budget for outside ac-
quisitions. Indeed, a discretionary fund of
any kind looks inconsistent with a pure
access philosophy. Whereas, public tele-
vision actively programs (chooses content)
like any broadcaster, public access oper-
ates as a common carrier; the access man-
ager allows the public to program on a
first-come first-served basis which is, in
theory, content-blind.
Allocation of access time and facilities
can be handled without much conflict as
long as demand stays low relative to sup-
ply. But what happens when things get
tight? Perhaps uniform limits are set and
large users are told to move their excess
load onto leased access — or elsewhere.
Otherwise, the public access manager
starts making hard decisions and becomes
a PROGRAMMER. Where there is dis-
cretionary money available, there are
bound to be a lot of demands. Remember
that in Boston it's the Community Access
AND Programming Foundation.
Brian Kahin is Coordinator for the Re-
search Program on Communications Pol-
icy at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology,
/IMERIOIN OIBLESYSTEMS
Congratulates it's Hometown Video Winners
LIVE PROGRAMMING:
l^Quincy Cablesystems: "Your Opinion Please"
ENTERTAINMENT:
Newbury Cablesystems: "Portraits"
PROGRAMMING BY CHILDREN:
Randolph Cablesystems: "A New Kid at School"
ft Congratulations one and all! ft
42 Community Television Review
Classified Ads
Send all ads with payment to:
NFLCP
906 Pennsylvania Ave,* SE
Washington, DC 20003
The price of all classified ads in CTR is $13
per column inch. There are 20 words in a col-
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divide the number of words by 20 and multiply
that times 13, The minimum price for a
classified ad is $13. All checks must be made
payable to NFLCP. For more information con-
tact: Paul D'Ari, NFLCP, 906 Pennsylvania
Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20003, (202)
544-7272.
A Community Programming
Outlet
Soujourn Productions is developing a na-
tionwide magazine format for local pro-
gramming, and is looking for interested ac-
cess producers and independent producers.
For more information contact:
Jay Gierkey
Sojourn Productions
Route One
Cedar, MI 49621
(616) 228-5015
Executive Director and
Chief Engineer
Minneapolis Telecommunications Net-
work (MTN) is seeking its first Executive
Director and Chief Engineer. MTN is a non-
profit corporation created by the City of
Minneapolis to manage the dedicated public
cable TV channels*
Qualifications for the Executive Director
include management experience in ad-
ministering budgets of at least $500,000 and
management experience in cable TV or
broadcast. Salary dependent upon
qualifications in the range of $35,000 to
$50,000.
Qualifications for the Chief Engineer in-
clude supervisory engineering experience in
video production and cable television.
Salary dependent upon qualifications in the
range of $25,000 to $35,000.
For full information and applications
contact:
Will Loew-Blosser
MTN, 317M, City Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55415
(612) 333-5194
MTN is an equal opportunity and affir-
mative action employer.
OPERATIONS MANAGER
Milwaukee Access Telecommunications
Authority (MATA), a non-profit corpora-
tions, is seeking a full time Operations
Manager to oversee a public access facility
which would generate programming on two
cable channels. Competitive salary and
benefits. For more information contact:
Timothy J. Keeiey
City of Milwaukee
Personnel Department
200 East Wells Street, Room 706
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Women and minorities are stongly en-
couraged to apply.
A REFERENCE BOOK FOR
CHILDREN'S COMMUNITY
CABLE
A project is underway to provide a com-
prehensive national reference book on
children's use of cable television: This book
will include information about types of ex-
isting programs; subject involvement;
facilities; staffing; community size and par-
ticipation; funding; franchise agreements;
and additional relevant information.
The reference book would be helpful to
persons interested in becoming involved in
children's programming and to those
already in the field. The information and
models it provides will help determine
resources available in the community for
developing children's programming. Those
already producing children's programming
will be able to compare their work with
what is being done elsewhere and explore
new ideas.
If you would like your program included
or would like some more information con-
cerning this project, please contact:
Paula A, Schwartz
Coordinator of Emerging Technologies
Teachers College, Columbia University
Box 8, 525 West 120th St.
N.Y., N.Y. 10027
ACCESS OPERATIONS
MANAGER
Acadiana Open Channels, Inc. is interview-
ing for an operations manager. Skills re-
quired include management of operations,
scheduling, cataloging and training of day
to day operations. Also required is a pro-
fessional knowledge of video equipment,
production skills and training. Organization
skills are a must. Two years of production
experience in a video center is required.
Salary range $15 - 18,000 yearly. Send
resume and resume tape to:
Acadiana Open Channels, Inc.
124 East Main Street
Lafayette, LA 70501
#
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF
MONTGOMERY
COMMUNITY TELEVISION
Montgomery Community Television, Inc.,
a newly-created independent, nonprofit cor-
poration established to produce and
manage community access on franchisee's
countywide cable system, seeks a highly
motivated and experienced individual to
serve as Executive Director. The Executive
Director will supervise staff and a contrac-
tor in the promotion, support, and produc-
tion of locally-produced cable programm-
ing including public access, government ac-
cess, and educational access with an annual
budget of approximately $2 million. Person
must have strong leadership skills and solid
experience in; management of a major
enterprise, contract and budget administra-
tion, staff support to a Board of Directors
and advisory committees, television produc-
tion and public access, community
outreach, and mobilization of volunteers.
Selection of candidates for interviews will
occur in late October. Board desires Ex-
ecutive Director to be available to start work
in December, 1984. Interesed persons
should send statement of qualifications and
salary requirements to:
Mr, Roger S. Nelson
Board of Directors
Montgomery Community Television, Inc.
c/o Montgomery County Division of Cable
Television and Telecommunications Policy
101 Monroe Street — 5th Floor
Rockville, MD 20850
Hometown
Festival
Videotapes
Set for
National
Tour
COMMUNITY TELEVISION AT ITS BEST
The Hometown USA Bicycle Tour
presents amont the best local programs
that cable television has to offer. These
programs were selected from nearly 700
videotapes that entered the 1984
Hometown USA Video Festival. Half of
the tapes are produced by public access
volunteers and the other half are produc-
ed by staff members of local cable com-
panies. There were nearly fifty award
winners. The bicycle tour includes eight
of those programs in three one hour
videotapes.
If you wish to rent this package, fill out
the form at the bottom of this page, and
return it to the National Federation of
Local Cable Programmers, 906 Penn-
sylvania, Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C
20003.
Here are the programs in the
Hometown USA Bicycle Tour;
Honolulu Wheelchair Marathon,
Honolulu, Hawaii (30 minutes from the
Sports Category), is a documentary that
examines wheelchair atheletes competing
in a marathon race.
TRS Training Tape, Boulder, Col-
orado (16 minutes from the Instructional
Training Category), describes the use of
"the grip " a recently developed artificial
limb.
Andrew Wolf: Variations, Boston,
Massachusetts (15 minutes from the
Documentary Profile Category), is a
documentary profile of pianist/composer
Andrew Wolf.
Uptown Local: El Bario, New York,
New York (28 minutes from the Local
News/Magazine Category), is a profile
of a Hispanic neighborhood in New York
City.
Dallas Interacts, Dallas, Texas (30
minutes from the Interactive Category),
is a live public affairs program on
Warner-Amex's QUBE system. The pro-
gram includes discussions on topics rang-
ing from the environment to national
defense, and is hosted by Dallas City
Councilman Wes Wise.
Vertical Interval, Alhambra, Califor-
nia (30 minutes from the Arts and
Cultural Expresion Category), is a news
magazine format that features the work
of local artists.
A Pool of Hockney, Eden Prairie,
Minnesota (12 minutes from the Pro-
gramming by Children Category), was
produced by six children. The program
reveals the response of children to the
works of artists David Hockeny.
World Peace is a Local Issue, San
Francisco, California (20 minutes from
the Documentary Public Awareness
Category), examines how the City Coun-
cil of Palo Alto, California responded to
citizen concerns about world peace.
YES! I WANT TO RENT HOMETOWN USA FOR A 10 DAY PERIOD.
ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND A CHECK FOR $120.
Name Organization
Street C ity
State . Zip Code Telephone .
Rental Week
(first choice) (second choice)
Make check payable to NFLCP.
Return to: NFLCP
906 Pennslyvania Ave., S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20003
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